5. JOINT FESTIVAL OF THE GERMAN WORKERS’ 
EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS IN LAUSANNE 
(JUNE 26 AND 27, 1859) 

Our hero takes to his heels and with undiminished pleasure he 
retreats to— Arcadia. We meet him again in a “secluded corner of 
Switzerland”, in Lausanne, at a “Joint Festival” of a number of 
German workers’ educational associations which took place 
towards the end of June. Here Karl Vogt saved Switzerland for 
the second time. While Catiline was sitting in London, our Cicero 
with the gay-coloured jacket thundered in Lausanne: 

“Jam, jam intelligis me acrius vigilare ad salutem, quam te ad perniciem 
reipublicae.”’ 

By happy chance there exists an authentic report on the 
above-mentioned “Joint Festival’ and on the deed of valour 
performed during it by our “well-rounded character”. Written by 
Herr G. Lommel with the collaboration of Vogt, it is entitled Das 
Centralfest der Deutschen Arbeiterbildungsvereine in der Westschweiz 
(Lausanne 1859), Geneva, 1859, Markus Vaney, rue de la Croix 
d’or. Let us compare the authentic report with the “Magnum 
Opus”, which appeared five months later. The report contains 
Cicero-Vogt’s speech “delivered by himself” and in it he begins by 
explaining the mystery of his presence at this gathering. He 
appears among the workers, he harangues them, because 

“grave accusations have latterly been made against him, accusations which, if 
they were true, were bound utterly to destroy the confidence placed in him and 
completely undermine all his political activities”. “I have come,” he goes on, “I have 
specifically come here to protest publicly against the” (above-mentioned) “malicious 
underhand dealings” (Report, pp. 6-7). 

He has been accused of Bonapartist intrigues, he has to rescue 
his political activities and as is his wont he defends his skin with 
his tongue. After indulging in empty talk for an hour and a half, 
he recollects Demosthenes’ admonition that “action, action and 
once again action is the soul of eloquence”.» 

But what is action? In America there is a small animal called a 
skunk which has only one method of defending itself at moments 
of extreme danger: its offensive smell. When attacked it releases a 
substance from certain parts of its body which, if it touches your 
clothes, will ensure that they have to be burnt and, if it touches 

a “You will already be aware that I attend with greater zeal to the salvation of 
the state than you to its destruction” (Cicero, Speeches against Catiline, I, 4).— Ed. 
5 Demosthenes, The Olynthiac, Second Speech, Chapter Four.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—III. Police Matters 69 

your skin, will banish you for a period from all human society. 
The smell is so horribly offensive that when hunters see that their 
dogs have accidentally started a skunk they will hurriedly take to 
their heels in greater panic than if they had found that a wolf or a 
tiger was pursuing them. For powder and lead is an adequate 
defence against wolves and tigers, but no antidote has been found 
to the a posteriort of a skunk. 

That is what action is, says our orator, a naturalised citizen of 
the “Kingdom of Animals”,* and bespatters his supposed perse- 
cutors with the following skunk-like effluent: 

“But IT would like to warn you of one thing above ail else, and that is of the 
machinations of a small group of depraved men whose aims and efforts are all 
directed towards seducing the worker away from his job, implicating him in 
conspiracies and communist intrigues, and finally, after living from the sweat of his 
brow, driving him cold-bloodedly” (i. e. after he has finished sweating) “to his 
destruction. Now once again this small group is using every possible method” (just 
keep it as general as possible!) “to ensnare the workers’ associations in its toils. 
Whatever they mav say” (about Vogt’s Bonapartist intrigues) “you may rest assured 

that their true aim is to exploit the worker for their own selfish ends and finally to 
abandon him to his fate” (Report, p. t8. See Appendix). 

Che shameless impertinence with which this “skunk” accuses me 
and my friends of “living from the sweat of the workers’ brow”, when 
we have always sacrificed our private interests in order to defend 
those ot the working class, and have done this gratis, is not even 
original. The mouchards of the December Gang hurled similar 
slanders at Louis Blanc, Blanqui, Raspail, etc. And not only that, 
for at all iimes and in ail places the sycophants of the ruling class 
have always resorted to these despicable slanders to denigrate the 
literary and political champions of the oppressed classes. (See 
Appendix 5.) 

After this action our “well-rounded character” is incidentally no 
longer able to keep a straight face. The buffoon goes on to 
compare his “persecutors” who are walking about freely, with the 
“Russians taken prisoner at Zorndorf”.? And he compares himself 
with—who would have guessed it!— Frederick the Great. Falstatf- 
Vogt remembers that Frederick the Great ran away trom the first 
battle at which he was present. How much greater then is he who 
ran away without even waiting for the battle.* 

* Kobes 169 relates in Jacob Venedey’s pamphlet Pro dome und pro patria gegen 
Karl Vogt, Hanover, 1860: “He was a witness to the fact that the Imperial Regent, 

* An allusion to the title of Karl Vogt’s book, Untersuchungen tiber Thierstaaten, 
in which the author treats his subject as a vulgar materialist.— Ed. 
b Georg Lommel, op. cit., S. 19.— Ed. 

70 Kar] Marx 

Thus far the adventures of the Joint Festival at Lausanne 
according to the authentic report. And “now just look” (as 
Fischart puts it) “at our clammy-handed, parasitically stout, 
slovenly cook and pot holder’’* and see what a fine police purée a 
la Eulenspiegel he serves up five months later for the benefit of 
the German philistines. 

“They wanted at all costs to create complications in Switzerland; some sort of blow 
was to be aimed ... at the policy of neutrality. I was informed that the Joint Festival 
of the Workers’ Educational Associations was to be used to induce the workers to 
follow a route which they had firmly rejected. It was hoped that the lovely Festival 
would provide an opportunity for forming a secret committee to enter into 
communication with like-minded people in Germany and take God knows what 
steps” (Vogt does not know, even though he was informed). “There were all sorts of 
dark rumours and mysterious talk about the active intervention of the workers in 
German political affairs. I at once resolved to oppose these intrigues and to exhort the 
workers anew to turn a deaf ear to all proposals of this sort. At the conclusion of the 
speech referred to above I gave a solemn warning, etc.” (“Magnum Opus”, pp. 180 
{-81)). 

Cicero-Vogt has already forgotten that at the start of his speech 
he let slip what had brought him to the Joint Festival—not the 
neutrality of Switzerland but the need to save his own skin. His 
speech does not contain a single word about the intended plot 
against Switzerland. the conspiratorial intentions at the Joint 
Festival, the secret committee, the active intervention of the 
workers in German politics or proposals of “this” or any other 
“sort”. Not a word about all these Stieberiads. His final warning 
was nothing but the warning of the honest Sikes in the Old Bailey 
who warned the jurymen not to listen to the “infamous” detectives 
who had caught him stealing. 

“The events which immediately followed,” Falstaff-Vogt declares (“Magnum 
Opus”, p. 181), “confirmed my forebodings.” 

Karl Vogt, was not present when we and the four other Imperial Regents forced the 
Government of Wurttemberg to bring the Parliament to an honourable end with 
sword and bayonet. It is an amusing story. The other four Imperial Regents had 
already entered the carriage to go to the Assembly Room, as agreed, and there 
together with the Rump Farliament ;...{ to put on a bold front” (it is well known 
that the Rump Parliament had no head). [Venedey says here: die Brust bicter: 
(literally, to presen: the breast). The phrase is an adaptation of the German 
idiomatic expressior. die Stirn bieten (to present the forehead) which means “to put 
on a bold front”. Marx puns on Venedey’s substitution of Brust (breast) tor Stirr 
{torehead) te sires: that the Rump Pariiament had no head.} “Karl Vogt slammed 
tie Carriage-door shut and called to tise Coachman: ‘You go on ahead, the carriage 
is fuli up. 1 shall follow on! But Kar! Vogt only appeared [...] after all possible 
danger was over’ (ioc. cit., pp. 25, 2-4). 

@ fohann Fischart, Aftfentheurliche. Naupengeheurliche Geschichtklitterung..., S. 
713.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—III. Police Matters 71 

What does he mean, forebodings! But Falstaff has already 
forgotten that a few lines before he did not have “forebodings”, 
but that he had been “informed”, informed of the plans of the 
conspirators, and informed in detail! And what, you vengeful 
angel,” were the events which immediately followed? 

“An article in the Allgemeine Zeitung imputed tendencies to the Festival and to 
the life of the workers which these” (i. e. the Festival and the life) “did not in the 
least have in mind.” (Just as Vogt had imputed tendencies to the Murten Congress 
and the workers’ organisations in general.) “This article and a reprint of it in the 
Frankfurter Journal led to a confidential inquiry from the Ambassador of a South 
German state in which the Festival was given the importance” —“‘imputed” to it by 
the article in the Allgemeine Zeitung and the reprint in the Frankfurter Journal? —by 
no means!— “which it ought to have had if the intentions of the Brimstone Gang had 

Ought to have had! Yes indeed! 

Although the most superficial comparison of the “Magnum 
Opus” and the authentic report on the Joint Festival is enough to 
clear up the mystery of Cicero-Vogt’s second rescue of Switzer- 
land, I nevertheless wished to ascertain whether there was any 
factual basis, however slender, that might have given him the 
“matter” which provided him with his “energy’.” I wrote, 
therefore, to the editor of the authentic report, Herr G. Lommel in 
Geneva.‘ Herr Lommel must have been on friendly terms with 
Vogt since he not only collaborated with him on the report on the 
Joint Festival in Lausanne but also, in a subsequent pamphlet 
about the Schiller and Robert Blum memorial celebrations in 
Geneva,“ he covered up the fiasco that Vogt had brought upon 
himself there. In his reply of April 13, 1860, Herr Lommel, who is 
personally unknown to me, wrote: 

‘Vogts story that he had frustrated a dangerous conspiracy in Lausanne 1s the 
Sheerest fairy-tale or lie; he only went to Lausanne because it was an opportunity to 
make a speech which he could afterwards print. In the speech, which lasted 1 !/5 
hours, he defended himself against allegations that he was in the pay of Bonaparte. 
I still have the manuscript in safe keeping.” 

a An allusion to Goethe’s Faust, Erster Teil, Marthens Garten. But instead of 
Goethe’s du ahnungsvoller (foreboding) Engel Marx has du ahndungsvoller (vengeful) 
Engel.— Ed. 

b Carl Vogt, Mein Prozess..., S. 181, 182. In the last sentence the italics are 
Vogt’s. He is referring to the article in the Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 215 
(supplement), August 3, 1859.— Ed. 

© Marx to Lommel, April 9, 1860 (present edition, Vol. 41).— Ed. 

d Georg Lommel, Das Centralfest der Deutschen Arbeiterbildungsvereine in der 
Westschweiz, Genf, 1859.— Ed. 

vied Karl Marx 

A Frenchman living in Geneva, when asked about the same 
Vogtian conspiracy, replied bluntly: 

“I] faut connaitre cet individu” (namely Vogt), “surtout le faiseur, l’homme 
important, toujours hors de la nature et de la vérité.” 4 

Vogt himself declares on p. 99 of his so-called Studien” that he 
“had never laid claim to prophetic gifts”. But we know from the 
Old Testament that the ass could see what the prophet had 
missed.© And so we can understand how Vogt managed to see the 
conspiracy which in November 1859 he had forebodings of having 
“frustrated” in June 1859. 

6. MISCELLANY 

“If my memory does not deceive me,” our Parliamentary Clown writes, “the 
circular” (i. e. an alleged address to the proletarians dated London 1850) “was 
indeed written by a follower of Marx’s known as Parliamentary Wolf, and it was 
allowed to fall into the hands of the Hanover police. Here too we find this same 
channel turning up in the history of the circular ‘of the patriots to the men of 
Gotha’” (“Magnum Opus”, p. 144). 

A channel turns up! A prolapsus ani,’ perhaps, you zoological 
jester? 

As to “Parliamentary Wolf”—and we shall see later on why, like 
a bad dream, Parliamentary Wolf weighs so heavily on the 
memory of our Parliamentary Clown—he published the following 
Statement in the Berlin Volks-Zeitung, the Allgemeine Zeitung and 
the Hamburg Reform: 

“‘ Statement. Manchester, February 6, 1860: I see from the letter of a friend that 
the National-Zeitung (No. 41 of this year) has brought the following passage to the 
attention of the public in a leading article based on Vogt’s pamphlet: 

“In 1850 another circular was dispatched from London to the proletarians in 
Germany, written, as Vogt believes he remembers, by Parliamentary Wolf, alias 
Casemate Wolf. The circular was allowed simultaneously to fall into the hands of 
the Hanover police.’ I have seen neither the relevant issue of the National-Zeitung 
nor the Vogt pamphlet and would like therefore to direct my answer solely to the 
passage just cited: 

“1. In 1850 I was living not in London but in Zurich, and I did not move to 
London until the summer of 1851. 

“2. I have never in the whole of my life written a circular addressed either to 
‘proletarians’ or to anyone else. 

a “One must know this fellow who is above all a charlatan, a self-important, 
unnatural, untruthful man.” — Ed. 

6 Carl Vogt, Studien zur gegenwartigen Lage Europas, Genf und Bern, 1859, S. 99. 
Marx’s italics.— Ed. 

¢ Numbers 22: 21-33.— Ed. 

4 Prolapse of the rectum.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—III. Police Matters 13 

**3. As to the insinuation about the Hanover police I hereby return this shamelessly 
invented accusation to its author with contempt. If the remainder of Vogt’s pamphlet is 
as full of impudent lies as the part that refers to me it is a worthy fellow to the 
fabrications of Chenu, de la Hodde & Co. 

W. Wolff” @ 

There you are: just as Cuvier could construct the whole skeleton 
of an animal from a single bone, Wolff has correctly constructed 
Vogt’s whole fabrication from a single fragmentary quotation. Karl 
Vogt can indeed stand beside Chenu and de la Hodde as primus 
inter pares. 

The last “proof” adduced by Vogt, who is still “by no means at 
a loss”, to demonstrate my entente cordiale with the secret police 
in general and “my relations with the Kreuz-Zeitung party in 
particular’, consists in the argument that my wife is the sister of 
the retired Prussian Minister Herr von Westphalen (“Magnum 
Opus”, p. 194). Now how to parry the cowardly stratagem of our 
fat Falstaff? Perhaps the Clown will forgive my wife the cognate 
Prussian Minister” when he learns of the agnate Scotsman‘ who 
was beheaded in the market-place in Edinburgh as a rebel in the 
war of liberation against James II. It is well known that it is only 
by accident that Vogt still carries his own head around. For at the 
Robert Blum celebrations of the German Workers’ Educational 
Association in Geneva (November 13, 1859) he reported 

“how the Left of the Frankfurt Parliament was for a long time undecided who 
to send to Vienna, Blum or him. Finally, the matter was decided by lot, by drawing 
a piece of straw, which fell upon Blum, or rather against him” (Die Schillerfeier zu 
Genf usu., Geneva, 1859, pp. 28, 29). 

On October 13 Robert Blum set out from Frankfurt for Vienna. 
On October 23 or 24 a deputation of the extreme Left in 
Frankfurt arrived in Cologne on the way to the Democratic 
Congress in Berlin.”’ I met these gentlemen, among whom were 
several Members of Parliament who had close bonds with the Neue 
Rheinische Zeitung. These parliamentarians, of whom one was 
summarily shot during the campaign for the Imperial Constitu- 
tion, a second died in exile, while the third still lives, whispered all 
sorts of strange and sinister stories in my ear about Vogt’s 
intrigues in connection with Robert’ Blum’s mission to Vienna. 

4 Wilhelm Wolff. “Erklarung’, Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 44 (supplement), 
February 13, 1860. Also published in the Hamburg Reform on February 11, 1860 
and in the Berlin Volks-Zeitung on February 24, 1860.—- Ed. 

b Ferdinand von Wesiphalen.-- Ed. 

© Archibald Campbell Argvl. -~ Fd. 

However, 

Bid me not speak, bid me be silent, 
To keep the secret I am bound.? 

The Robert Blum celebrations of November 1859 in Geneva to 
which we have already referred treated our “well-rounded 
character” most unkindly. On entering the premises, waddling like 
an obsequious Silenus at the heels of his patron, James Fazy, a 
worker was heard to say: There’s Harry with Falstaff after him. 
When he told a delightful anecdote designed to present himself as 
the alter ego of Robert Blum, it was only with difficulty that some 
infuriated workers were prevented from storming the podium. 
And when, finally, forgetting how he had frustrated the revolution 
in June, he himself “called yet again for the barricades’’” 
(Schillerfeier, p. 29) a mocking echo repeated: “Barricades— 
shmarricades!” Abroad, however, people know so well just what 
value they are to place on Vogt’s revolutionary mouthings that the 
“confidential inquiry from a South German Ambassador’”’,“ usually 
unavoidable, was unforthcoming on this occasion and no article 
appeared in the Allgemeine Zeitung. 

Vogt’s entire Stieberiad from the “Brimstone Gang” to the 
“retired Minister” reveals the sort of Mastersinger of whom Dante 
Says: 

Ed egli avea fatto del cul trombetta.* 

* And he made a trumpet of his rear. (Kannegiesser) [Dante, The Divine Comedy, 
Inferno, Canto XXI. Kannegiesser is the name of the German translator.] 

a Mignon’s song in Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Finftes Buch, 
Kapitel 16.— Ed. 

6 The closing line of the poem about Robert Blum which Vogt quoted 
concluding his speech at the Blum celebrations (see Georg Lommel, Die 
Schiller-Feier in Genf. Nebst einem Nachtrag enthaltend die diesjahrige Todtenfeier für 
Robert Blum, Genf, 1859, S. 29).— Ed. 

© Carl Vogt, Mein Prozess..., S. 181-82.— Ed. 

IV 
TECHOW’S LETTER 

What else does our “well-rounded character” pull out of that 
“tristo sacco 
Che merda fa di quel, che si trangugia.” 
(Dante) * 

A letter from Techow dated London, August 26, 1850: 

“I cannot characterise these activities better” (i.e. of the “Brimstone Gang’”’) 
“than by imparting to you the contents of a letter from a man whom all who have 
ever known him will acknowledge as a man of honour, a letter which I may permit 
myself to publish because it”* (the man of honour or the letter?) “was expressly 
intended for communication” (to whom?) “and the considerations” (whose?) ‘which 
earlier militated against publication no longer obtain” (“Magnum Opus”, p. 141). 

Techow arrived in London from Switzerland at the end of 
August 1850. His letter is addressed to Schimmelpfennig, formerly 
a lieutenant in the Prussian army, who lived in Berne at the time. 
Schimmelpfennig was supposed to “communicate the letter to our 
friends”, i.e. the members of the Centralisation,” a secret society 
now extinct for nearly a decade, set up by German refugees in 
Switzerland with a rather mixed membership and a strong 
leavening of parliamentarians. Techow was a member of the 
society, but Vogt and his friends were not. How then did Vogt 
come into possession of Techow’s letter and who authorised him 
to publish it? 

* “The sordid sack 
That turns to dung the food it swallows.” [The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto 

XXVIII] 

a The German er used here can refer either to the man of honour or the 
letter.— Ed. 

76 Kar! Marx 

Techow himself wrote to me on the subject from Australia on 
April 17, 1860: 

“At any rate, I have never had occasion to give Herr Karl Vogt any authorisation 
in connection with this matter.” 

Of the “friends” of Techow to whom the letter was to be 
communicated only two are still living in Switzerland. Both may 
speak for themselves: 

E? to Schily, April 29, 1860, Upper Engadine, Grisons Canton: 

“When Vogts pamphlet Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung appeared, 
containing a letter from Techow to his friends in Switzerland dated August 26, 
1850,> we, the friends of Techow still living in Switzerland, resolved to write to 
Vogt to express our disapproval of his unauthorised publication of the letter. 
Techow’s letter had been addressed to Schimmelpfennig in Berne and the 
intention was to distribute copies of it among friends.... I am glad that we were not 
mistaken in our belief that none of Techow’s friends, none of those who had a 
right to see the letter of August 26, had used it after the manner of the man who 
has by accident come into possession of it. On January 22 a letter was dispatched to 
Vogt protesting against the unauthorised publication of Techow’s letter, forbidding 
any further misuse of it and demanding the return of the letter. On January 27 Vogt 
replied: “Techow’s letter was intended to be shown to his friends; the friend who 
had it in his possession had handed it over with the express wish that it should be 
published ... and he would only return the letter to the man from whom he had 
received it.’” 

BS to Schily, Zurich, May 1, 18607°: 

“The letter to Vogt was written by me after I had discussed the matter with E.... 
R.¢ was not among the ‘friends’ for whom Techow’s letter was intended. From the 
contents of the letter, however, it was perfectly clear to Vogt that it had been 
addressed to me among others, but he took good care not to ask me for permission 
to publish it.” 

The solution to the riddle is contained in a passage from Schilys 
letter quoted earlier and which I have saved up for this moment. 
He writes: 

“I must say something here about Ranickel because it is through him that 
Techow’s letter must have fallen into Vogt’s hands, a point in your letter which I had 
almost overlooked. This letter was written by Techow to friends he had lived with 
in Zurich: Schimmelpfennig, B. and E. As their friend and Techow’s, I was also 
able to read it later on. When I was brutally and summarily expelled from 
Switzerland (without any previous order of expulsion having been made I was 
simply arrested in the street in Geneva and immediately transported from there), I 
was not permitted to go back to my lodgings to arrange my affairs. From the 
prison in Berne I wrote to a reliable man in Geneva, a master shoemaker called 

a Karl Emmermann.— Ed. 

b See Carl Vogt, Mein Prozess..., S. 142-61.— Ed. 
¢ Friedrich von Beust.— Ed. 

4d Ranickel.— Ed. 

¢ See this volume, pp. 43-46.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—IV. Techow’s Letter 77 

Thum, asking him to find one or other of my friends who might be still in Geneva 
(for I did not know whether the same fate had not befallen any of them), who 
could pack up my belongings and send the most valuable of them to me in Berne, 
putting the remainder into safe keeping for the time being. I wanted that person to 
sort out my papers taking particular care to ensure that nothing should be 
forwarded to me which could not survive the transit through France. Thum did as 
I asked him and Techow’s letter remained behind. My belongings included a 
number of papers relating to a rebellion of the parliamentarians against the 
Geneva local committee for the distribution of money for the refugees (the 
committee consisted of three Geneva citizens, among them Thum, and two 
refugees, Becker and myself). Ranickel was familiar with these as he had taken the 
side of the committee against the parliamentarians. For this reason I had asked 
Thum as the treasurer and archivist of the committee to take out those papers with 
Ranickel’s help. It may now be the case that, having a legitimate reason for being 
present while my papers were being sorted, Ranickel somehow got his hands on 
Techow’s letter. Perhaps it was given him by one of the sorters. I do not by any 
means dispute the transfer of the letter into his possession, as distinct from the transfer 
of property rights from me to him. On the contrary, I claim the latter quite 
explicitly. I soon wrote to Ranickel from London asking him to send me the letter. However, 
he did not do so and his culpa manifesta* dates from that time. At the beginning it 
was probably only levis” but it then mounted, depending on the extent of his 
complicity in the unauthorised publication of the letter, to magna or maxima culpa‘ 
or even to dolus. I do not doubt for a single moment that his publication of the 
letter was unauthorised and that none of the addressees had given their permission, 
but 1 shall nevertheless write to E. for confirmation of this. Nor can it be doubted 
that Ranickel assisted in the publication, given his notorious intimacy with Vogt. 
And even though I do not wish in the least to criticise that intimacy, I cannot 
refrain from pointing out the contrast with their earlier relationship. For Ranickel 
had not only been one of the greatest enemies of the parliamentarians in general; 
he had also uttered the most blood-curdling threats in regard to the Imperial 
Regent in particular. ‘T’ll strangle the fellow,’ he would shout, ‘even if I have to go 
to Berne to do it’, and we had to forcibly restrain him from carrying out his 
regicidal intention. But now that the scales seem to have fallen from his eyes, and 
Saul has turned into Paul,° I am very curious to see how he will worm his way out 
of another obligation: that of becoming the avenger of Europe. I have fought a hard 
struggle, he would say in the days when he was hesitating between Europe and 
America, but now it is at an end. I shall remain and—avenge myself!! Let 
Byzantium tremble.” ! 

Thus far Schilys letter. 
Ranickel, then, unearthed Techow’s letter among the papers 
left behind by Schily. Notwithstanding Schily’s request for it from 

a Manifest guilt.— Ed. 

6 Slight.— Ed. 

¢ Great or maximum guilt.— Ed. 

d Evil intent.— Ed. 

€ The Acts of the Apostles 9: 15-17.— Ed. 

f “Trema, Bisanzio!” —quoted from Gaetano Donizetti’s opera Belisario, Act UH, 
Scene 3 (libretto by Salvatore Cammarano).— Ed. 

& Marx uses the verb aufstiebern—an adaptation of the verb aufstébern (ferret 
out, unearth)—formed by analogy with Stieber, the name of a German police 
agent.— Ed. 

London, he retained it. The letter misappropriated in this way was 
handed by “friend” Ranickel to “friend” Vogt, and “friend” 
Vogt, with his characteristic delicacy of conscience, declared 
himself authorised to publish the letter since Vogt and Ranickel 
are “friends”. Anyone, therefore, who writes a letter to be 
“communicated” to “friends”,-necessarily writes for the benefit of 
“friends” Vogt and Ranickel—arcades ambo.* 

I must apologise if this peculiar sort of jurisprudence leads me 
back to long-past and half-forgotten events. But Ranickel has 
started it and I must follow. 

The “Communist League’ was founded in Paris in 1836, 
originally under another name.” The organisation that gradually 
evolved was as follows: a certain number of members formed a 
“community”, the different communities in the same town 
constituted a “district” [Kreis] and a varying number of districts 
were joined together into “leading districts” [leitende Kreise]. At 
the head of the whole stood the “Central Authority” which was 
elected at a congress consisting of deputies from all the districts, 
but which had the right to add to its own numbers and, in 
emergencies, to nominate its successor on a provisional basis. The 
Central Authority was based first in Paris, and then, from 1840 to 
the beginning of 1848, in London. The chairmen of the 
communities and districts and the Central Authority itself were 
elected. This democratic constitution, utterly unsuitable for 
conspiratorial secret societies, was not incompatible, to say the 
least, with the tasks facing a propaganda association. The activities 
of the “League” consisted first of all in founding public German 
workers’ educational associations, and the majority of the associa- 
tions of this sort, which still exist in Switzerland, England, Belgium 
and the United States, were founded either directly by the 
“League” or else by people who had at one time belonged to it. 
The constitution of these workers’ associations is accordingly the 
same everywhere. One day per week was devoted to discussion, 
another to social activities (singing, recitations, etc.). Libraries were 
set up everywhere, and where possible classes in elementary 
education were started for the instruction of the workers. The 
“League” standing behind the public educational associations, and 
guiding them, found them both the most convenient forum for 

a Literally ““Arcadians both”, i.e. each deserves the other—an expression used 
by Virgil in Bucolics (Eclogues), 7, 4,and later by Byron, who wrote: “ ‘Arcades 
ambo’ id est—blackguards both” (Don Juan, IV, 93).— Ed. 

b The League of the Just.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—IV. Techow’s Letter 79 

public propaganda and also a reservoir whose most useful 
members could replenish and swell its own ranks. In view of the 
itinerant life of German artisans it was only on rare occasions that 
the Central Authority had to send special emissaries. 

As far as the secret doctrine of the “League” is concerned, it 
underwent all the transformations of French and English socialism 
and communism, as well as their German versions (e. g. -Weitling’s 
fantasies). After 1839, as is made clear in the Bluntschli report,’ 
the religious question came to play the most important role 
alongside the social problem. The various phases undergone by Ger- 
man philosophy from 1839 to 1846 were followed with the most 
lively interest in these workers’ societies. The secret form of the 
society goes back to its Paris origins. The chief purpose of the 
League— propaganda among workers in Germany—dictated the 
retention of this form in later years. During my first stay in Paris? 
I established personal contact with the leaders of the “League”’ 
living there as well as with the leaders of the majority of the secret 
French workers’ associations, without however becoming a 
member of any of them. In Brussels, where Guizot’s expulsion 
order had sent me, I, together with Engels, W. Wolff and others, 
founded the German Workers’ Educational Society,” which is 
still in existence. At the same time we published a series of 
pamphlets,* partly printed, partly lithographed, in which we 
mercilessly criticised the hotchpotch of Franco-English socialism or 
communism and German philosophy, which formed the secret 
doctrine of the “League” at that time. In its place we proposed 
the scientific study of the economic structure of bourgeois society 
as the only tenable theoretical foundation. Furthermore, we 
argued in popular form that it was not a matter of putting some 
utopian system into effect, but of conscious participation in the 
historical process revolutionising society before our very eyes. In 
consequence of these activities the London Central Authority 
entered into correspondence with us and at the end of 1846 they 
sent one of their members, a watchmaker called Joseph Moll, who 
later fell as a soldier of the revolution on the field of battle in 
Baden,‘ to Brussels to invite us to join the “League”. Moll allayed 

a Johann Caspar Bluntschh, Die Kommunisten in der Schweiz nach den bei Weitling 
vorgefundenen Papieren..., Zurich, 1843.— Ed. 

b From late October 1843 to February 3, 1845.— Ed. 

¢ The only one extant is Circular Against Kriege (see present edition, Vol. 
6).— Ed. 

d See Frederick Engels, The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution 
(present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 225-26).— Ed. 

our doubts and objections by revealing that the Central Authority 
intended to convoke a Congress of the League in London where 
the critical views we had expressed would be laid down in an open 
manifesto as the doctrine of the League. He argued, however, that 
if backward and refractory elements were to be overcome, our 
participation in person was indispensable, but that this could only 
be arranged if we became members of the “League”. Accordingly, 
we joined it. The Congress, at which members from Switzerland, 
France, Belgium, Germany and England were represented, took 
place,* and after heated debate over several weeks it adopted the 
Manifesto of the Communist Party” written by Engels and myself, 
which appeared in print at the beginning of 1848 and was later 
translated into English, French, Danish and Italian. On the 
outbreak of the February revolution the London Central Authori- 
ty entrusted me with the leadership of the “League”. During the 
revolutionary period in Germany, its activities died down of 
themselves, since more effective avenues existed now for the 
realisation of its ends. When, in the late summer of 1849, I 
arrived in London after being expelled from France for a second 
time, I found that the Central Authority had been reconstructed 
from the ruins and that the links with the reconstituted districts of 
the League in Germany had been re-established. Willich arrived in 
London a few months later and was admitted to the Central 
Authority at my suggestion. He had been recommended to me by 
Engels, who acted as his adjutant in the campaign for the Imperial 
Constitution. To round off the history of the League I would only 
remark that there was a split in the Central Authority on 
September 15, 1850.‘ Its majority, including Engels and myself, 
transferred the seat of the Central Authority to Cologne, which had 
long been the “leading district” for Central and Southern 
Germany and which, after London, was the most important centre 
of intellectual activity. 

We resigned from the London Workers’ Educational Society at the 
same time. The minority on the Central Authority, however, 
including Willich and Schapper, set up a separate League” which 
maintained relations with the Workers’ Educational Society and 
also resumed contact with Switzerland and France, which had been 
interrupted since 1848. On November 12, 1852 the accused in the 
Cologne communist trial were condemned. A few days later, at my 

a The Second Congress of the Communist League was held in London between 
November 29 and December 8, 1847.— Ed. 

b See present edition, Vol. 6.— Ed. 

© See present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 625-30.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—IV. Techow’s Letter 8] 

suggestion, the League was declared dissolved.* I included a 
document, relating to the dissolution, dated November 1852, in 
the dossier on my action against the National-Zeitung. The reason 
given there for the dissolution of the League is that with the arrests 
in Germany, i.e. from as early as the spring of 1851, all contact with 
the Continent had in any case ceased to exist and that moreover 
circumstances were no longer favourable for a propaganda society of 
this sort. A few months later, at the beginning of 1853, the 
Willich-Schapper separate League also died a natural death. 
The issues of principle which underlay the split mentioned 
above are set out in my Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial, 
which contains an extract from the minutes of the meeting of the 
Central Authority of September 15, 1850. The immediate practical 
cause of the split was Willich’s efforts to involve the “League” in 
the revolutionary escapades of the German democratic emigration. 
The disagreement was exacerbated by wholly opposed interpreta- 
tions of the political situation. I shall cite only one example. Willich 
had conceived the idea that the quarrel between Prussia and 
Austria on the question of the Electorate of Hesse and the 
German Confederation” would lead to serious conflicts and create 
an opportunity for the practical intervention of the revolutionary 
party. On November 10, 1850, shortly after the split in the 
“League”, he published a proclamation along these lines entitled 
Aux démocrates de toutes les nations‘ over the signatures of the 
Central Authority of the “separate League” as well as those of 
French, Hungarian and Polish refugees. Engels and I, on the 
other hand, as can be seen in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Revue 
(double issue, May to October 1850, Hamburg, pp. 174, 175), 
maintained on the contrary that “None of this noise will lead to 
anything.... Without a drop of blood having been shed, the parties 
to the dispute”, i.e. Austria and Prussia, “will come together on 
the benches of the Federal Diet”’’ in Frankfurt “without there 
being the slightest diminution in their petty mutual jealousies, or 
in their dissensions with their subjects, or in their irritation at 

Russian supremacy’”’.* 

a See Marx’s letter to Engels dated November 19, 1852 (present edition, Vol. 
39). A copy of the letter is to be found in Marx’s notebook for 1860.— Ed. 

b See present edition, Vol. 11.— Ed. 

‘¢ Le Constitutionnel, November 18, 1850. The text of this proclamation is quoted 
by Marx in his letter to Engels dated December 2, 1850 (see present edition, Vol. 
38).— Ed. 

d See “Review, May to October [1850]” (present edition, Vol. 10, p. 528). The 
italics were introduced by Marx in Herr Vogt.— Ed. 

Now it may be judged from the following document whether 
Willich’s individuality (whose worth incidentally we do not intend 
to dispute) and the then (1850) still fresh memories of his 
experiences in Besangon enabled him “impartially” to consider 
conflicts which contradictory views had rendered inevitable and 
had constantly renewed: 

“The German Brigade in Nancy 

to 

Citizen Joh. Philipp Becker in Biel, 

President of the German military 

association ‘Self-Help’ 78 
Citizen, 

“We are writing to inform you, as the elected representative of all German 
republican refugees, that in Nancy a brigade of German refugees has been formed 
which bears the name: ‘German Brigade in Nancy.’ 

“The refugees who make up the present Brigade are composed partly of 
former members of the Vesle Brigade and partly of units of the Besancon Brigade. 
Factors of a purely democratic nature are responsible for the removal of the latter 
from Besancon. 

“The fact is that in everything that he did, Willich very rarely consulted the 
Brigade. Hence the principles governing the Besancon Brigade were not generally 
discussed and decided by all members, but were decreed a priori by Willich and put 
into effect without the approval of the Brigade. 

“Furthermore, Willich also provided evidence of his despotic nature a posteriori 
in the form of a number of orders worthy of a Jellachich or a Windischgratz, but 
not a republican. 

“Willich ordered a man called Schén, who wished to resign from the Brigade, 
to take off his new shoes which had been purchased from the savings of the 
Brigade, disregarding the fact that Sch6n too had contributed his share to these 
savings, which consisted chiefly of the daily 10 sous per capita which the French 
paid by way of subsidy.... Sch6n wanted to take his shoes with him, but Willich 
forced him to leave them behind. 

“Several valuable members of the Brigade were for trivial offences such as 
absence from roll-call, drill, lateness (in the evening), petty quarrels, etc., ordered 
by Willich, who did not consult the Brigade, to leave Besangon. They could go to 
Africa, he remarked, for they had no right to remain in France, and if they did not 
go to Africa he would see to it that they were extradited to Germany. He claimed 
that the French Government had given him authority to do this, but upon 
subsequent inquiry the Prefecture in Besancon declared this to be untrue. Almost 
every day at roll-call, Willich announced: Whoever does not like it here can go, if he 
wishes, the sooner the better; he can go to Africa, etc. On one occasion he also 
uttered the general threat that anyone who refused to obey his orders could either 
go to Africa or he, Willich, would have him extradited to Germany. This led to our 
making the above-mentioned inquiry at the Prefecture. As a result of these daily 
threats many people were fed up with life in Besancon where, as they said, one was 
constantly provoked into chucking up the whole paltry business. If we wish to be 
slaves, they said, we can go to Russia and we need not have started the fight in 
Germany in the first place. In short, they declared that they could no longer 
endure it in Besangon at any price without coming into serious conflict with 
Willich. They therefore left Besangon, but as at that time there was no other 
brigade which they could join, and as they could not live on the 10 sous on their 

Herr Vogt.—IV. Techow’s Letter 83 

own, they had no other choice but to sign on for Africa, and this they did. In this 
way Willich reduced thirty worthy citizens to despair and he is to blame for their 
loss to the national cause. 

“Furthermore, Willich was unwise enough always to praise his old colleagues at 
roll-call while denigrating the new ones, and this led to constant friction. On one 
occasion Willich even declared at roll-call that the Prussians were far superior to 
the South Germans in head, heart and body, or as he put it, in physical, moral and 
intellectual abilities. The South Germans, in contrast, were easy-going, or rather, 
stupid was what he wanted to say, but he did not quite dare. In this way Willich 
managed to infuriate the South Germans, who were in a great majority. We have 
left the worst to the end: 

“Two weeks ago the 7th Company allowed a man called Baroggio whom Willich 
had arbitrarily expelled from the barracks to spend an extra night in their room. 
Despite Willich’s refusal to permit this they kept him in their room and defended it 
against Willich’s supporters, fanatical tailors. Willich then ordered ropes to be 
brought and the rebels to be bound. The ropes really were brought, but although 
Willich had the will to have his order carried through, he did not have the 
power.... It is for these reasons that they have left the Brigade. 

“We have not written this letter in order to accuse Willich. For Willich’s 
character and intentions are good, and many of us respect him. But we did not like 
the manner in which he attempts to achieve his ends nor all the means he uses. 
Willich means well. But he believes to be wisdom itself and the ultima ratio and 
thinks that everyone who opposes him, even on petty issues, is either a fool or a 
traitor. In short, Willich acknowledges no opinion other than his own. He is a 
spiritual aristocrat and despot; when he has resolved on a thing, he does not easily 
shrink from using the means necessary to put it into practice. But enough: we know 
Willich now. We know his strengths and his weaknesses; this is why we are no 
longer in Besancon. Incidentally, when we left Besancon we all declared that we 
were leaving Willich, but that we did not wish to resign from the German military 
association ‘Self-Help’. 

“This applies to the members of the Vesle Brigade also.... 

“Assuring you of our enduring respect, we conclude with fraternal greetings 
from the Brigade in Nancy. 

“Approved in general assembly, November 13, 1848. 

“Nancy, November 14, 1848 

“In the name and on the instructions of the Brigade, 
B..., Secretary” 

Let us now return to Techow’s letter. As with other reptiles, its 
poison is in the tail, namely in the postscript of September 3 
(1850). It refers to a duel between Herr Willich and my friend, 
Konrad Schramm, who died a premature death. In the duel, which 
took place in Antwerp in the beginning of September 1850, 
Techow and Barthélemy, a Frenchman, acted as Willich’s seconds. 
Techow wrote to Schimmelpfennig “for communication to our 
friends”: 

“They” (i.e. Marx and his followers) “have let their champion Schramm loose 
against Willich who had attacked him” (Techow means: whom he had attacked) 

“with invective of the most vulgar sort and finally challenged him to a duel.” 
(“Magnum Opus”, pp. 156, 157.) 

My refutation of this stupid piece of gossip was published seven 
years ago in the pamphlet, cited earlier, The Knight of the Noble 
Consciousness, New York, 1853. 

At the time Schramm was still alive. Like Willich he was living in 
the United States. 

Willich’s second, Barthélemy, had not yet been hanged; 
Schramm’s second, the worthy Polish officer Miskowsky, had not 
yet been burnt to death,’”? and Herr Techow could not yet have 
forgotten the letter he had written for “communication to our 
friends”. 

In the above-mentioned pamphlet there is a letter from my 
friend Frederick Engels, dated Manchester, November 23, 1853, at the 
end of which he writes: 

“In the meeting of the Central Authority, when it came to a challenge 
to a duel between Schramm and Willich, 1” (Engels) ‘““am supposed” 
(according to Willich) ‘to have committed the crime of having ‘left 
the room’ together with Schramm shortly before the scene took 
place, and, therefore, of having prepared the whole scene in advance. 
Previously” (according to Willich) “it was Marx who was alleged to 
have ‘egged on’ Schramm, now for a change I am supposed to 
have done so. A duel between a Prussian lieutenant, an old hand 
at pistol shooting, and a commergant, who perhaps had never had a 
pistol in his hand, was truly a remarkable means to ‘get rid’ of the 
lieutenant. Yet friend Willich maintained everywhere, orally and 
in writing, that we had wanted to get him shot.... Simply, 
Schramm was furious at Willich’s shameless behaviour, and to the 
great astonishment of us all he challenged him to a duel. A few 
minutes before, Schramm himself had no inkling that it would 
come to this. Never was an action more spontaneous.... Schramm 
departed” (from the room) “only after being personally addressed 
by Marx, who wanted to avoid any further scandal. 

Fr. Engels” (The Knight, etc., p. 7.)* 

How far I was from foreseeing that Techow would allow himself 
to become a vehicle for this stupid piece of gossip can be seen 
from the following passage of the same pamphlet: 

“Originally, as Techow himself told Engels and me after his return to 
London, Willich was firmly convinced that through Schramm I 
aimed at his removal from this world, and he put this idea in 
writing everywhere. On closer reflection, however, he found it 
impossible that a diabolical tactician like myself could hit on the 

* See present edition, Vol. 12, pp. 492, 493. The italics were introduced by 
Marx in Herr Vogt.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt—IV. Techow’s Letter 85 

idea of getting rid of him by means of a duel with Schramm” (loc. 
cit., p. 9).? 

The gossip that Techow imparted to Herr Schimmelpfennig 
for “communication to our friends” was hearsay which he simply 
repeated. Karl Schapper, who took Willich’s side when later the 
split in the League occurred and who witnessed the challenge, has 
written this letter to me about it: 

“5 Percy Street, Bedford Square, 
September 27, 1860 
“Dear Marx, 

“Concerning the row between Schramm and Willich: 

“It broke out during a meeting of the Central Authority as the result of a fierce 
argument between the two which arose by chance in the course of the discussion. I 
can still remember very well that you did everything possible to restore calm and to 
settle the affair and that you appeared to be as much taken by surprise by this 
sudden explosion as I myself and everyone else present. 

“Salute, 
Your Karl Schapper” 

Finally, it is worth mentioning that a few weeks after the duel, in 
a letter dated December 31, 1850, Schramm himself accused me of 
being partial to Willieh. The disapproval which Engels and I had 
openly expressed, both before the duel and after it, had 
momentarily annoyed him. His letter and other papers of his and 
Miskowsky’s concerning the duel, which have come into my hands, 
are available for perusal by his relatives. They should not be 
exposed to the gaze of the public. 

When Konrad Schramm next visited me in London in mid-July 
1857 after his return from the United States, his impetuous, tall, 
youthful frame had already collapsed under the impact of 
galloping consumption, which however had merely heightened the 
effect of his strikingly handsome features. With the sense of 
humour peculiar to him and which never left him for a moment, 
the first thing he showed me, laughing as he did so, was the notice 
of his death which an indiscreet friend had already published in a 
German paper in New York on the basis of a rumour.” On 
medical advice Schramm went to St. Hélier in Jersey, where 
Engels and I saw him for the last time. Schramm died on January 
16, 1858. At his burial, which was attended by the entire liberal 
population of St. Hélier and the whole of the emigration resident 

a ibid., p. 496. The italics were introduced by Marx in Herr Vogt.— Ed. 
b See Marx’s letter to Engels dated April 9, 1857 (present edition, Vol. 40). The 
paper referred to is Neue Zeit.— Ed. 

there, the funeral oration was given by one of the best English 
popular orators, G. Julian Harney, who was known earlier as one 
of the Chartist leaders and who had been friendly with Schramm 
during his stay in London. Schramm’s ardent, fiery and enterpris- 
ing nature, which could never be curbed by mundane concerns, 
was combined with critical understanding, original intelligence, 
ironic humour and naive geniality. He was the Percy Hotspur of 
our party. 

To return to Herr Techow’s letter. A few days after his arrival in 
London, he had a long meeting with us jate one evening* in a 
tavern where Engels, Schramm and myself acted as hosts. He 
describes the meeting in his letter of August 26, 1850 to 
Schimmelpfennig, “for communication to our friends’. I had 
never met him before and only saw him once or twice afterwards, 
and then only briefly. Nevertheless, he at once made a penetrating 
analysis of me and my friends, closely examining our minds, 
hearts and entrails, and hastened to send a letter containing a 
psychological description behind our backs to Switzerland, careful- 
ly advising his “friends” that it should be secretly reproduced and 
distributed. 

Techow is much concerned with the state of my “heart”. I will 
generously refrain from following him into this territory. “Ne 
parlons pas morale’ as the Parisian grisette says when her friend 
starts to talk politics. 

Let us dwell a while on the recipient of the letter of August 26, 
the former Prussian lieutenant Schimmelpfennig. I do not know the 
gentleman personally and have never seen him. I shall quote from 
two letters to convey his character. The first, which I give only in 
extract, was addressed to me by my friend W. Steffen, a former 
Prussian lieutenant and teacher in the Divisional School. It is 
dated Chester, November 23, 1853*! and he writes: 

“Willich once sent an adjutant called Schimmelpfennig over” (to Cologne). “He 
paid me the compliment of summoning me to him and he was firmly convinced 
that he could assess the whole situation right from the start better than anyone who 
was involved in it from day to day. He therefore formed a very low opinion of me 
when I told him that the officers of the Prussian army would be far from 
considering themselves fortunate to be able to fight under his banner and Willich’s 
and that they were certainly not inclined to proclaim Willich’s republic at once. He 
became even angrier when no one showed himself foolish enough to offer to 
duplicate the proclamation which he had brought with him in readiness and which 
exhorted the officers to declare themselves in favour of what he called democracy. 

a On August 21, 1850.— Ed. 
b See Carl Vogt, Mein Prozess..., S. 142-61.— Ed. 
© “Don’t let’s talk morality.” — Ed. 

Herr Vogt—IV. Techow’s Letter 87 

“In a fury, he departed from what he described to me as ‘a Cologne enslaved by 
Marx’. He arranged for the duplication of his nonsense elsewhere and dispatched it 
to a large number of officers with the result that the chaste mystery of his cunning 
plan to convert Prussian officers to the republican cause was prostituted by the 
‘Spectator’ of the Kreuz-Zeitung.” 

At the time of this adventure, Steffen, who only came to 
England in 1853, was completely unknown to me. Even more 
revealing is Schimmelpfennig’s self-characterisation in the following 
letter to the same Ho6rfel who was later exposed as a French police 
agent. He was the heart and soul of the Revolutionary Committee 
founded in Paris at the end of 1850 by Schimmelpfennig, Schurz, 
Hafner and other friends of Kinkel in those days and he was on 
terms of intimacy with those two matadors Schurz and Schim- 
melpfennig. 

Schimmelpfennig to Horfel (in Paris, 1851): 

“Here” (in London) “the following events have taken place.... We have written 
to all our friends with any influence” (in America) “asking them to prepare the 
way for the loan” (the Kinkel Loan) “first of all by talking for some time about the 
power of conspiracy, both personally and in the press, and by emphasising that people 
worth their salt will never leave the field of battle— neither the Germans, the French 
nor the Italians.” (History does not have no date?*) “... Our work is now off to a good 
start. If you drop people who are too obstinate, they will soon think better of it and 
come to accept the conditions imposed. Since the work is now firm and secure, I 
shall tomorrow establish contact with Ruge and Haug.... My own social position, like 
yours, is very oppressive. It is vital that our affairs should get moving soon.” (Namely 
the business of Kinkel’s Revolutionary Loan.) 

“Your Schimmelpfennig”’ 

This letter of Schimmelpfennig’s is to be found in the 
Enthüllungen which A. Ruge published in the Herold des Westens, 
Louisville, September 11, 1853. Schimmelpfennig, who was 
already living in the United States when they appeared, never 
impugned the authenticity of the letter. Ruge’s Enthillungen are 
reprinted from a document entitled “Aus den Akten des Berliner 
Polizeiprasidiums”’. It consists of marginal notes by Hinckeldey and 
of papers which were either found by the French police in the 
possession of Schimmelpfennig and Horfel in Paris, or were 
unearthed at Pastor Dulon’s in Bremen, or, lastly, were entrusted to 
the German-American press during the Frogs-and-Mice War 
between Ruge’s Agitation Union and Kinkel’s Emigré Society,*? by 
the feuding brothers themselves. Typical is the irony with which 

a Marx ridicules Schimmelpfennig’s ungrammatical sentence by alluding to an 
equally ungrammatical statement made by Prince Lichnowski, a reactionary deputy 
of the Frankfurt National Assembly, who said at one of the sessions: “Fur das 
historische Recht gibt es kein Datum nicht” (“With regard to historical right there 
does not exist no date”) (cf. present edition, Vol. 7, p. 369).— Ed. 

Hinckeldey remarks that Schimmelpfennig abruptly cut short his 
journey through Prussia as missionary on behalf of Kinkel’s 
Revolutionary Loan because “he imagined that he was being pursued 
by the police”! The same Enthüllungen contain a letter from Karl 
Schurz, “the representative of the Paris Committee” (i.e. that of 
Horfel, Hafner, Schimmelpfennig, etc.) “in London”, in which we 
find: 

“It was decided yesterday that of the members of the emigration here Bucher, 
Dr. Frank, Redz from Vienna and Techow, who will soon be here, should be asked 
to join the discussions. N.B. Techow should not be informed of this decision for the time 

being, either verbally or in writing, before his arrival.” (Karl Schurz to his “dear men” 
in Paris, London, April 16, 1851.) 

It was to one of these “dear men”, Herr Schimmelpfennig, that 
Techow addresses his letter of August 26, 1850 for “communica- 
tion to our friends”. He begins by informing the “dear man” of 
theories which I had been trying to keep a strict secret, but which 
he at once detected at our single encounter by means of the 
proverb “in vino veritas’. 

“I,” Herr Techow recounts to Herr Schimmelpfennig, “for communication to 
our friends”, “I ... declared finally that I had always imagined them” (i.e. Marx, 

Engels, etc.) “to be above all the nonsense about a communist paradisiacal barn a la Cabet, 
etc.” (“Magnum Opus”, p. 150.) 

Imagined! So Techow did not even know the elementary facts 
about our views, but was nevertheless magnanimous and condes- 
cending enough to imagine that they were not exactly “nonsense”. 

Leaving scientific works to one side, even if he had read the 
Manifesto of the Communist Party, which he later calls my 
“Proletarian Catechism”, he would have found in it a detailed 
chapter with the title “Socialist and Communist Literature”, and at 
the end of this chapter a section entitled ‘“Critical-Utopian 
Socialism and Communism’, in which it says: 

“The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those 
of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen and others, spring into existence in 
the early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle 
between proletariat and bourgeoisie... The founders of these 
systems saw, indeed, the class antagonisms, as well as the action of 
the decomposing elements in the prevailing form of society. But 
the proletariat offered to them the spectacle of a class without any 
historical initiative or any independent political movement. Since 
the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the 

a Carl Vogt, Mein Prozess..., S. 150. Marx’s italics and bold type.— Ed. 
b ibid., S. 152.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—IV. Techow’s Letter 89 

development of industry, the economic situation, as they find it, 
does not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the 
emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search after a 
social science, after social laws, that are to create these conditions. 
Social action is to yield to their personal inventive action, 
historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones, 
and the gradual class organisation of the proletariat to an 
organisation of society specially contrived by these inventors. Future 
history resolves itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the 
practical carrying out of their social plans.... The significance of 
Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an_ inverse 
relation to historical development..... Therefore, although the 
originators of these systems were, in many respects, revolutionary, 
their disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary sects 
[...] and [...] still dream of experimental realisation of their social 
Utopias, of founding isolated ‘phalanstéres’, of establishing ‘Home 
Colonies’, of setting up a ‘Little Icaria’*— duodecimo editions of the 
New Jerusalem...” (Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848, pp. 21, 
male 

In the concluding words Cabet’s Icaria, or “paradisiacal barn”, 
to use Techow’s expression, is explicitly referred to as a 
‘“duodecimo edition of the New Jerusalem”. 

Techow’s self-confessed total ignorance of the ideas that Engels 
and I had published in print years before our encounter with him 
is the factor that completely accounts for his misunderstanding. A 
few quotations will serve adequately to characterise him: 

“He” (Marx) “laughs at the fools who blindly repeat his Proletarian Catechism 
after him, just as he laughs at communists like Willich and at the bourgeoisie. The 
only men he respects are aristocrats, those who are pure aristocrats, and are 
conscious of being so. To oust them from power he requires a force which he can find 
only in the proletariat. This is why his system is tailored to fit that force” (“Magnum 
Opus”, p. 152). 

* Phalansteres were Socialist colonies on the plan of Charles Fourier; Icaria was 
the name given by Cabet to his Utopia and, later on, to his American Communist 
colony. [Note by Engels to the English edition of 1888.] 

“Home Colonies” were what Owen called his Communist model societies. 
Phalanstéres was the name of the public palaces planned by Fourier. Icaria was the 
name given to the Utopian land of fancy, whose Communist institutions Cabet 
portravec. [Note hy Engels to the German edition of 1890. 

a Here and below Marx quotes from the first German edition of the Manifesto of the 
Communist Party, published in London in 1848 (see present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 514-15, 
516). The italics were introduced by Marx in Herr Vogt.— Ed. 

90 ‘Karl Marx 

Techow thus “imagines” that I have written a “Proletarian 
Catechism”. He means the Manifesto which criticises and, if he 
likes, “ridicules” socialist and critical utopianism of every kind. Only, 
this “ridiculing” was not such a simple matter as Techow 
“imagines”, but required a fair amount of work, as he could see from 
my book against Proudhon, Misére de la philosophie (1847).* Techow 
further “imagines” that I have “tailored” a “system”, whereas, on the 
contrary, even in the Manifesto which was intended directly for 
workers, I rejected systems of every kind and in their place I insisted 
on “a critical insight into the conditions, the line of march and the 
ultimate general results of the real movement of society”.” Such an 
“insight” cannot be blindly repeated, nor can it be “tailored” like a 
cartridge pouch. Of rare naivety is the view of the relations between 
aristocracy, bourgeoisie and proletariat, as Techow “imagines” them 
and imputes them to me. 

I “respect” the aristocracy, “laugh” at the bourgeoisie, and I 
“tailor a system” to fit the proletariat, using them to “oust the 
aristocracy from power”. In the first section of the Manifesto, 
entitled “Bourgeois and Proletarians” (see Manifesto, p. 11),° it is 
argued in detail that the economic and, hence too, in one form or 
another, the political sway of the bourgeoisie is the essential 
precondition both of the existence of the modern proletariat and 
of the creation of the “material conditions for its emancipation”. 
“The development of the modern proletariat” (see Neue Rheinische 
Zeitung. Revue, January 1850, p. 15) “is, in general, conditioned by 
the development of the industrial bourgeoisie. Only under its rule 
does the proletariat gain that extensive national existence which 
can raise its revolution to a national one, and does it itself create 
the modern means of production, which become just so many 
means of its revolutionary emancipation. Only tts rule tears up the 
material roots of feudal society and levels the ground on which 
alone a proletarian revolution is possible.”* I declared accordingly in 
the same “Review” that any revolution in which England did not 
take part was no more than a “storm in a teacup”.” Engels had 
already advanced the same opinion in 1845 in The Condition of the 
Working-Class in England‘ Hence in countries where an aristocracy 

a See present edition, Vol. 6.— Ed. 

b ibid., p. 497.— Ed. 

© ibid., pp. 495-96.— Ed. 

4 Karl Marx, The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850 (see present edition, Vol. 
10, p. 56). The italics were introduced by Marx in Herr Vogt.— Ed. 

€ See present edition, Vol. 4.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—IV. Techow’s Letter 9] 

in the Continental sense of the term—and this is what Techow 
meant by “aristocracy” —has still to be “ousted from power”, the 
very first prerequisite of a proletarian revolution is in my opinion 
missing, namely the existence of an industrial proletariat on a 
national scale. 

Techow could have found my view of the attitude to the 
bourgeois movement adopted by the German workers in particular 
expressed very clearly in the Manifesto. 

“In Germany they [the Communists] fight with the bourgeoisie 
whenever it acts in a revolutionary way, against the absolute 
monarchy, the feudal landowners and philistinism [Kleinbiirgere?]. 
But they never cease, for a single instant, to instil into the working 
class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism 
between bourgeoisie and proletariat, etc.” (Manifesto, p. 23.)? 

When I stood before a bourgeois jury in Cologne charged with 
“rebellion”, I argued along the same lines: “Modern bourgeois 
society still has classes, but no longer social estates. Its development 
lies in the struggle between these classes, but the latter stand 
united against the estates and their monarchy by the grace of 
God.” (“Zwei politische Prozesse, verhandelt vor den Februar-Assisen 
zu K6éln 1849”, p. 59.)* 

What else did the liberal bourgeoisie do in its appeals to the 
proletariat between 1688 and 1848 but “tailor systems and 
phrases” in order to use the proletariat’s strength to oust the 
aristocracy from power? So Herr Techow discovers that the core 
of the matter hidden in my secret theory is bourgeois liberalism of 
the crudest sort! Tant de bruit pour une omelette!* Since, on the other 
hand, Techow knew perfectly well that “Marx” was no bourgeois 
liberal, he was left finally with no choice but “to go away with the 
impression that his personal supremacy was the goal of all his 
actions”. “All my actions”, what a temperate description of my 
single interview with Herr Techow! 

Techow further confides to his Schimmelpfennig, “for com- 
munication to our friends’, that I had expressed the following 
monstrous opinion: 

a Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (see present 
edition, Vol. 6, p. 519). Marx quotes the German edition of 1848.— Ed. 

b Marx uses the idiomatic expression des Pudels Kern from Goethe’s Faust, Erster 
Teil, Studierzimmer.— Ed. 

© Much ado about an omelette!—an exclamation which. Jacques Vallée, Sieur 
des Barreaux, is supposed to have made when a thunderstorm occurred while he 
was eating an omelette on a fast-day.— Ed. 

“In the end it is a matter of complete indifference whether this miserable 
Europe were to be destroyed, a thing which must happen within a short space of 
time without a social revolution, and whether afterwards America would exploit the. 
old system at Europe’s expense.” (‘Magnum Opus”, p. 148.) 

My conversation with Techow took place at the end of August 
1850. In the February 1850 issue of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. 
Revue, i.e. eight months before Techow culled this secret from my 
lips, I revealed the following views to the German public: 

“Now we come to America. The most important thing to have 
occurred here, more important than the February revolution, is 
the discovery of the Californian gold-mines., Already now, after 
barely eighteen months, one may predict that this discovery will 
have much more impressive consequences than the discovery of 
America itself.... For the second time world trade is taking a new 
direction ... the Pacific Ocean will have the same role as the 
Atlantic has now and the Mediterranean had in antiquity and in 
the Middle Ages—that of the great water highway of world 
commerce; and the Atlantic will decline to the status of an inland 
sea, like the Mediterranean nowadays. The only chance the 
civilised nations of Europe will then have, not to fall into the same 
industrial, commercial and political dependence to which Italy, 
Spain and Portugal are now reduced, lies in a social revolution.” 
(Revue, No. 2, February 1850, pp. [76,] 77.)° 

But the idea that old Europe will be “destroyed within a short 
space of time” and America will accede to the throne the following 
morning, belongs to Herr Techow. The clarity of my own view of 
America’s immediate prospects at that time can be seen from 
another passage in the same “Review”: “Over-speculation will 
develop very soon, and even if British capital becomes involved on 
a large scale [...] nevertheless this time New York will remain the 
centre of the whole swindle and, as in 1836, will be the first to 
suffer when it collapses.” (Revue, double issue, May to October 
1850, p. 149.)° This prognosis for America, which I made in 1850, 
was fully borne out by the great trade crisis of 1857. As to “old 
Europe”, on the other hand, having given an account of the 
revival of its economy, I go on to say: “With this general 
prosperity, in which the productive forces of bourgeois society 

a In this passage Marx left out Vogt’s italics and introduced bold type.— Ed. 

b See present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 265-66. The word “then” in the last sentence 
was introduced by Marx in Herr Vogt.—Ed. 

¢ Here and immediately below Marx quotes, with minor alterations, from 
“Review, May to October [1850]” (see present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 506 and 510). 
The italics were introduced by Marx in Herr Vogt.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—IV. Techow’s Letter 93 

develop so luxuriantly ... there can be no talk of a real 
revolution.... The various quarrels in which the representatives of 
the individual factions of the Continental party of Order now 
indulge and mutually compromise themselves, far from providing 
the occasion for revolution, are, on the contrary, possible only 
because the basis of the relationships is momentarily so secure and, 
what the reaction does not know, so bourgeois. All reactionary 
attempts to hold up bourgeois development will rebound off it just 
as certainly as all moral indignation and all enthusiastic proclamations 
of the democrats. A new revolution is possible only in consequence 
of a crisis” (loc. cit., p. 153). 

And in fact European history has only re-entered an acute and, 
if one wishes, revolutionary phase since the crisis of 1857-58. In 
fact it was precisely during the reactionary period from 1849 to 
1859 that industry and trade on the Continent, and along with 
them the material foundations for the political domination of the 
bourgeoisie, developed to an extent unheard of previously. In fact 
during this period “all moral indignation and all enthusiastic 
proclamations of the democrats” rebounded off the realities of 
economic conditions. 

If Techow took the serious side of our discussions so humor- 
ously, he made up for it by the seriousness with which he 
responded to their humorous side. With a woebegone face he 
reports to his Schimmelpfennig “for communication to our 
friends”: 

“Furthermore, Marx stated: In revolutions officers are always the greatest 
threat; [...] from La Fayette to Napoleon, a series of traitors and treacheries. One 

ought always to have dagger and poison in readiness for them.” (“Magnum Opus”, 
p. 153.)2 

Even Techow will not wish to claim that the platitude about 
the treasonable activities of “the military” is an original opinion of 
mine. My originality is supposed rather to consist in the “dagger 
and poison” always to be held in readiness. Did Techow not know 
even then that really revolutionary governments, such as the 
Comité du salut public,’ kept antidotes in readiness for “the 
military” that were very drastic though less melodramatic? The 
dagger and poison really belong to the stock-in-trade of a 
Venetian oligarchy. If Techow were to scrutinise his letter once 
again, he would perhaps notice the irony in the “dagger and 
poison”. Vogts fellow-scoundrel, Edouard Simon, the notorious 
Bonapartist spy, translated the last part of Techow’s letter in the 

a In this passage the italics are Vogt’s.— Ed. 

Revue contemporaine (XIII, Paris, 1860, p. 528, in his “Le procés 
de M. Vogt, etc.””) adding his own gloss: 

‘Marx n’aime pas beaucoup voir des officiers dans sa bande. Les officiers sont 
trop dangereux dans les révolutions. 

“TL faut toujours tenir préts pour eux le poignard et le poison! 

“Techow, qui est officier, se le tient pour dit; il se rembarque et retourne en 
Suisse.” * 

According to Edouard Simon, poor Techow was in such a panic 
at the thought of the “dagger and poison” I was holding in 
readiness, that he immediately took to his heels, boarded ship and 
returned to Switzerland. The Imperial Vogt prints the passage 
about “dagger and poison” in bold type, to send a shiver down 
the spine of the German philistines. However, the same merry 
gentleman wrote in his so-called Studien: 

“Today the knife and the poison of the Spaniard are shining in even greater glory—for 
it was the independence of the nation that was at stake” (loc. cit., p. 79).> 

Quite by the way: the Spanish and English historical sources 
dealing with the period 1807-14 have long since disproved the 
tales about poison invented by the French. But for the tub- 
thumping politicians, of course, they survive unscathed. 

I now come, lastly, to the “tittle-tattle” in Techow’s letter and 
shall provide a few illustrations of his historical impartiality: 

“The talk centred at first on the question of competition between them and us, 
Switzerland and London.|[...] They had to maintain the rights of the old League, which 

because of its own specific party policy of course could not tolerate another league 
operating in the same area” (the proletariat) (“Magnum Opus”, p. 143).< 

The rival organisation in Switzerland to which Techow refers 
here and as whose representative he, as it were, approached us, 
was the already-mentioned “Revolutionary Centralisation”’. Its Cen- 
tral Committee was located in Zurich and its President was a lawyer, 
a former Vice-President of one of the pocket parliaments of 1848 
and a member of one of the provisional governments in Germany 

in 1849.4 In July 1850 Dronke went to Zurich where, as a 

a “Marx does not much care to see officers in his gang. Officers are too 
dangerous in revolutions. 

“One ought always to have dagger and poison in readtness for them! 

“Techow, who is an officer, did not need to be told twice; he re-embarked and 
returned to Switzerland” (Edouard Simon, “Un tableau de moeurs politiques en 
Allemagne. Le procés de M. Vogt avec la gazette d’Augsbourg”, Revue contem- 
poraine, t. 13, Paris, February 15, 1860). The italics are Simon’s.— Ed. 

6 Carl Vogt, Studien zur gegenwartigen Lage Europas, S. 79. Marx's italics.— Ed. 

© Carl Vogt, Mein Prozess..., S. 143.— Ed. 

4 Samuel Erdmann Teschirner.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—IV. Techow’s Letter 95 

member of the London “League”, he was given a sort of legal 
contract by that lawyer “for communication” to me. I quote from 
it verbatim: | 

“Considering the necessity for a union of all truly revolutionary elements, and 
since all members of the Revolutionary Central Committee have acknowledged the 
proletarian character of the next revolution, even though not all were able 
unreservedly to accept the programme adopted in London (the Manifesto of 1848), 
the Communist organisation and the Revolutionary Centralisation have agreed on the 
following points: 

“1. Both parties agree to continue working side by side—the Revolutionary 
Centralisation will strive to prepare for the next revolution by attempting to unite 
all revolutionary elements, the London association will try to prepare for the rule 
of the proletariat by concentrating primarily on the organisation of proletarian 
elements ; 

“2. The Revolutionary Centralisation will instruct its agents and emissaries that, 
when forming branches in Germany, members who seem to be qualified to join the 
Communist organisation should have their attention drawn to the existence of an 
organisation devoted primarily towards the furtherance of proletarian interests; 

“3. and 4. That the leadership in the ‘Revolutionary Central Committee’ for 
Switzerland will only be entrusted to genuine supporters of the London Manifesto, 
and that there should be a general exchange of information.” 

It is evident from this document, which is still in my possession, 
that there was no question of two secret societies “operating in the 
same area” (the proletariat), but of an alliance between two 
societies with different aims operating in different areas. It is equally 
evident that the “Revolutionary Centralisation” declared itself 
willing to act as a sort of branch organisation of the “Communist 
League’, in addition to pursuing its own ends. 

The proposal was rejected because it was incompatible with the 
principles of the “League”. . 

“Then it was Kinkel’s turn.... To this they replied.... They had never striven for 
cheap popularity, on the contrary! [...] As far as Kinkel was concerned they would 
not have begrudged him his cheap popularity in the least, had he kept quiet. But 
once he had published that Rastatt speech in the Berlin Abend-Post peace was no 
longer possible. They had known perfectly well that there would be a general 
outcry; they had clearly foreseen that the existence of their present paper” 
(Rheinische Zeitung. Revue) “was at stake. Moreover, their fears had been realised. 
They had been ruined by the whole affair, they had lost all their subscribers in the 
Rhine Province and had to close the paper down. But it would do them no harm” 
(loc. cit., pp. 146-48). 

First a factual correction. It is not true that the Revue was closed 
down at this point, since one more, double issue came out three 

4 Gottfried Kinkel’s speech before the court martial in Rastatt on August 4, 
1849, Abend-Post, Nos. 78 and 79, April 5 and 6, 1850.— Ed. 
b Carl Vogt, Mein Prozess..., S. 146-48.— Ed. 

months afterwards.* Nor had we lost.a single subscriber in the Rhine 
Province, as my old friend ‘J. Weydemeyer, a former Prussian 
lieutenant of artillery and, at that time, editor of the Neue Deutsche 
Zeitung in Frankfurt, can testify since it was he who was kind 
enough to collect the subscriptions for us. For the rest, Techow, 
who had only a hearsay acquaintance with the writings of Engels 
and myself, nevertheless must at least have read our critique— 
which he himself criticises—of Kinkel’s speech. Why then send 
this confidential information to his “dear men” in Switzerland? 
Why “reveal” to them what we had ourselves revealed to the 
public five months previously? We wrote in the critique referred 
to: 

“We know in advance that we shall provoke the general wrath 
of the sentimental swindlers and democratic spouters by denounc- 
ing this speech of the ‘captured’ Kinkel to our party. To this we 
are completely indifferent. Our task is that of ruthless criticism . 
and in maintaining this our position we gladly forego cheap 
democratic popularity. Our attack will by no means worsen Herr 
Kinkel’s position; we denounce his amnesty by confirming his 
confession that he is not the man people allege to hold him for, 
and by declaring that he is worthy, not only of being amnestied, 
but even of entering the service of the Prussian state! Moreover, 
his speech has been published” (Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Revue, 
April 1850, pp. 70, 71).%’ 

Techow asserts that we “compromised” the petits grands hommes? 
of the revolution. However, he does not use the word “compro- 
mise” in the police sense of Herr Vogt. On the contrary, he means 
the operation by means of which we stripped off the offensive 
covering of those sheep who had dressed up in revolutionary 
wolf's clothing, thus preserving them from the fate of the 
celebrated Provencal troubadour* who was torn to pieces by the 
dogs because they took the wolf’s pelt seriously which he wore to 
go hunting. 

As an instance of our offensive attacks Techow singles out the 
incidental gloss on General Sigel to be found in Engels’ account of 
the “campaign for the Imperial Constitution” (see Revue, March 
1850, pp. 70-78).° 

a The issue in question— Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-dkonomische Revue, No. 
5-6——appeared in late November 1850.— Ed. 

5 Little great men.— Ed. 

© Vidal Peire.— Ed. 

d See present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 174-79.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt——IV. Techow’s Letter . 97 

Now Engels’ critique, which is based on documentary evidence, 
should be compared with the following malicious and trite twaddle 
about that same General Sigel, published about a year after our 
meeting with Techow by the London “Emigration Association” 
run by Techow, Kinkel, Willich, Schimmelpfennig, Schurz, 
H. B. Oppenheim, Eduard Meyen, etc. Moreover, this was pub- 
lished solely because Sigel belonged to Ruge’s “Agitation Union”, 
instead of Kinkel’s “Emigration Association”. 

On December 3, 1851 the Baltimore Correspondent,? which was at 
the time a sort of Kinkel Moniteur, published the following 
description of Sigel beneath the title “The Agitation Union in 
London”: 

“Let us take another look at these worthy men who regard everyone else as an 
‘immature politician’. Sigel, the supreme commander. If anyone ever asks the muse of 
history how such an insipid nonentity was given the supreme command she will be 
even more at a loss for an explanation than in the case of that mooncalf Napoleon. 
The latter is at least ‘his uncle’s nephew’; Sigel, however, is only ‘his brother’s 
brother’. His brother> became a popular officer as a result of his critical remarks 
about the government, remarks which had been provoked by his frequent arrests 
for disorderly behaviour. The young Sigel thought this reason enough in the early 
confusion prevailing at the outbreak of the revolution to proclaim himself supreme 
commander and Minister of War. The Baden artillery, which had often proved its 
worth, had plenty of older and more experienced officers who should have taken 
precedence over this young Lieutenant Sigel, and they were more than a little 
indignant when they had to obey a young, insignificant man whose inexperience was 
only matched by his incompetence. But there was Brentano, who was so mindless and 
treacherous as to permit anything that might ruin the revolution. It is a ridiculous 
fact, but a fact nevertheless, that Sigel promoted himself to the rank of commander-in- 
chief and that Brentano approved his nomination in retrospect.... It is certainly 
noteworthy that Sigel left the bravest soldiers of the republican army in the lurch at 
the desperate and hopeless battles in Rastatt and the Black Forest without the 
reinforcements he had promised while he himself drove around Zurich with the 
epaulettes and in the carriage of Prince von Furstenberg and paraded as an 
interesting unfortunate supreme commander. This is the well-known magnitude of 
this mature politician who, ‘understandably proud’ of his earlier heroic deeds, 
imposed himself as supreme commander for a second time, on this occasion in the 
Agitation Union. This is the great well-known man, the ‘brother of his brother.” 4 

Impartiality requires us to lend an ear also to Ruge’s “Agitation 
Union” in the person of its spokesman Tausenau. In an open letter 
addressed “To Citizen Seidensticker”, London, November 14, 1851, 

a Der Deutsche Correspondent (Baltimore).— Ed. 

b Albert Sigel.— Ed. 

¢ Presumably an analogy with The Great Unknown, i.e. Sir Walter Scott, who 
was called so because until 1827 his novels appeared anonymously.— Ed. 

d This passage is also quoted in the pamphlet The Great Men of the Exile by 
Marx and Engels (see present edition, Vol. 11, p. 324).— Ed. 

Tausenau writes with reference to the “Emigration Association” 
led by Kinkel, Techow, etc.: 

‘...They affirm their conviction that the union of all in. the interest of the 
revolution is an urgent patriotic duty. The German Agitation Union shares this 
conviction, and its members have proved this by their sustained efforts to achieve 
unity with Kinkel and his supporters. But as soon as a basis for political 
co-operation seemed to be established it vanished once again, and new disappoint- 
ments followed the old ones. High-handed actions in violation of previous 
agreements, separate interests in the guise of conciliation, the systematic ‘fixing’ of 
majorities, the emergence of unknown quantities as party leaders, attempts to 
impose a secret finance committee are but a few of the devious tricks and chess 
moves that immature politicians always resort to in exile in the belief that they are 
guiding the fortunes of their country, while in reality the very first glow of the 
revolution will dissipate all such vanities and scatter them to the winds.... We were 
denounced officially and in public by Kinkel’s supporters; the reactionary German 
press, which was barred to us, is packed with reports favourable to Kinkel and 
hostile to us. Finally Kinkel made the journey to the United States in order to use 
his project of the so-called German Loan as a means of imposing a union on us, or 
rather a status of subordination and dependence which is the goal of everyone who 
_ proposes a financial merger between two parties. Kinkel’s departure was kept so secret 
that we did not learn of it until we read in the American press about his arrival in 
New York.... All this, and other considerations of the same sort,were compelling 
motives to persuade serious revolutionaries who did not overestimate themselves, 
but who in the knowledge of their previous achievements could with self-confidence 
assert that at any rate clearly defined sections of the people stood behind them, to enter an 
association which seeks in its own way to further the interests of the revolution.” 2 

Further it is held against Kinkel that the funds he had collected 
were to be used for the benefit of “a clique”, as “his entire 
behaviour here” (in London) ‘“‘and in America makes plain”, as do 
also “the majority of the guarantors nominated by Kinkel 
himself”. | 

Tausenau concludes by saying: 

“We promise our friends neither interest on their money nor the repayment of 
their patriotic donations; but we know that we shall vindicate their confidence in us 
through our positive achievements” (fair services?) “and scrupulous accounting and 

that one day, when we come to publish their names, the gratitude of the nation will await 
them” (Baltimore Wecker of November 29, 1851). 

This was the sort of “literary activity” maintained in the 
columns of the German-American press for three years by the 
democratic heroes of the “Agitation Union” and the “Emigration 
Association” who were later joined by the “Revolutionary League 
of Two Worlds” * founded by Goegg. (See Appendix 6.) 

The refugee row in the American press, incidentally, was 
inaugurated by a paper battle *° between the parliamentarians Zitz 
and Roesler of Oels. 

a This passage is contained in Marx’s notebook for 1860.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—IV. Techow’s Letter 99 

One more fact by way of characterising Techow’s “dear men”. 

Schimmelpfennig, to whom Techow’s letter “for communication 
to our friends” was addressed, had set up a so-called Revolu- 
tionary Committee in Paris at the end of 1850 (as we have already 
mentioned) together with Horfel. Hafner, Goegg and others 
(K. Schurz joined in at a later date). 

A few years ago a document written by a former member of the 
Committee to a political refugee here was handed to me to use 
as I pleased. The document is still in my possession. 

It says, among other things: 

“Schurz and Schimmelpfennig were in effect the whole Committee. They also 
acquired some sort of associates but they were merely for show. These two 
gentlemen firmly believed at that time that they could soon put their Kinkel, whom 
they had virtually made their property, at the head of affairs in Germany. They 
particularly detested Ruge’s sarcasms and the criticism and demonic activity of 
Marx. At a meeting of these gentlemen with their associates they gave us a really 
very interesting description of Marx and conveyed to us an exaggerated impression 
of the pandemonic dangers he represented.... Schurz-Schimmelpfennig proposed a 
motion to destroy Marx. The means they recommended were insinuations and 
intrigues, and the most shameless slanders. A vote in favour and a resolution, if 
one can use these words to describe their childish antics, then took place. The next 
step was the character sketch of Marx published in the literary section of the 
Hamburger Anzeiger at the beginning of 1851. It was written by L. Hafner on the 
basis of the above-mentioned description by Schurz and Schimmelpfennig.” 

In any event there is the most striking affinity between Hafner’s 
essay and Techow’s letter, although neither the one nor the other 
can equal Vogt’s Lousiad. It is important not to confuse the Lousiad 
with the Lusiads of Camoens. The original Loustad was rather a 
mock heroic epic by Peter Pindar.?' 

a Leopold Hafner’s article was published in the Hamburger Nachrichten on 
February 28, 1851.— Ed. 

V 
IMPERIAL REGENT AND COUNT PALATINE 

Vidi un col capo si di merda lordo, 
Che non parea, s’era laico, o cherco, 
Quei mi sgrid6: perché se’ tu si ’ngordo 
Di riguardar piu me che gli altri brutti. 

(Dante) * 

Vogt, repulsed by the Bristlers, experiences a powerful need 
to show why the “Brimstone Gang” had singled him out as the béte 
notre. For this reason Cherval and the ‘frustrated conspiracy” at 
the Joint Festival in Lausanne are supplemented by the adventure 
of the “fugitive Imperial Regent”, an adventure which had no less 
reality than they. Vogt, we must not forget, was at one time 
Governor of the parliamentary island of Barataria.** His story goes 
like this: 

“Early in 1850 the Deutsche Monatsschrift of Kolatschek made its appearance. [...] 
Immediately after the publication of the first number, the Brimstone Gang, acting 
through one of its comrades who left for America without delay, issued a pamphlet with 
the title Der flüchtige Reichsregent Vogt mit seinem Anhange und die Deutsche 
Monatsschrift von Adolf Kolatschek, a work which was also mentioned by the 
Allgemeine Zeitung.... The Brimstone Gang’s whole system is revealed yet again in 
this pamphlet” (loc. cit., pp. [162-]163).4 

He goes on to explain at tedious length how, in the pamphlet 
referred to, an anonymous article on Gagern which had been 
written by Professor Hagen was “attributed” to the fugitive 
Imperial Regent, Vogt, because 

* IT there made out a smeared 
Head—whether clerk or lay was hard to tell, 
It was so thickly plastered with the merd. 
“Why stand there gloating?” he began to yell, 
“Why stare at me more than the other scum?” (Kannegiesser) {The Divine 
Comedy, Inferno, Canto XVIII. Kannegiesser ts the name of the German translator. | 

a Here and below Marx quotes from Vogt's Mein Prozess..., S. 162-63. The italics 
are Marx’s.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—V. Imperial Regent and Count Palatine 101 

“the Brimstone Gang knew” that Hagen “was living in Germany at the time, 
that he had been harassed by the Baden police and that he could not be named 
without exposing him to molestation of the most unpleasant sort” (p. 163). 

In his letter of February 6,7 Schily wrote to me from Paris: 

“That Greiner who, to the best of my knowledge, has never been to Geneva, has 
been linked with the Brimstone Gang, is the result of his obituary notice to the 
‘fugitive Imperial Regent’ for which d’Ester was held responsible and outlawed in 
parliamentary circles until I set matters right in a letter to one of Vogt’s friends 

Greiner was a member of the Provisional Government of the 
Palatinate. Greiner’s rule was an “unrelieved horror” (see Vogt’s 
Studien, p. 28), that is for my friend Engels, whom he had arrested 
on a trumped-up charge in Kirchheim. Engels has himself given a 
detailed account of the whole tragicomedy in the Neue Rheinische 
Zeitung. Revue (February 1850, pp. 53-55).° And that is all I know 
about Herr Greiner. The fact that the fugitive Imperial Regent has 
managed to implicate me in his quarrel with “Count Palatine” 
reveals “yet again” the ‘whole system” by means of which our 
ingenious raconteur has composed the story of the life and deeds 
of “the Brimstone Gang”. 

What endears him to me, however, is the true Falstaffian 
humour he displayed in causing the Count Palatine to depart for 
America “without delay”. The Count Palatine, having let fly his 
pamphlet at the “fugitive Imperial Regent” like a Parthian shot, 
was suddenly overwhelmed with horror. Which caused Greiner to 
flee from Switzerland to France, from France to England. Even 
the Channel did not seem to offer sufficient protection and so he 
fled headlong to a Cunard steamer? in Liverpool where he 
breathlessly cried out to the Captain: “Away, across the Atlantic!” 
And the “stern mariner’ replied: 

“Tll save you from the hands of the Vogt 
But from the might of the storm another must lend his aid.” f 

a Marx quotes from Schily’s letter of February 8, 1860.— Ed. 

b Ludwig Simon.— Ed. 

¢ See The Campaign for the German Imperial Constitution (present edition, Vol. 10, 
pp. 200-02).— Ed. 

d Marx uses the English word.— Ed. 

€ Marx uses the English phrase.— Ed. 

£ Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, Act I, Scene 1.— Ed. 

VI 

VOGT AND THE NEUE RHEINISCHE ZEITUNG 

“Sin kumber was manecvalt.” 4 

Vogt himself claims that his “purpose” in writing his “Magnum 
Opus” (p. 162) is to clarify “the development of his personal attitude to 
this clique” (Marx and Co.). Curiously enough, he only describes 
conflicts that he has never experienced and only experiences 
conflicts that he has never described. So it is necessary to confront 
his tall stories with a piece of real history. Anyone who leafs 
through the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (June 1, 1848-May 19, 1849) 
will discover that in 1848 Vogt’s name does not occur, apart from 
a single exception,” either in its leading articles or in_ its 
correspondence columns. It will be found only in the daily reports 
of the parliamentary debates and to Vogt’s immense satisfaction 
the Frankfurt reporter‘ never failed to record conscientiously the 
“applause” accorded to him for “the speeches delivered by 
himself”. We saw that whereas the Right wing in Frankfurt had at 
their disposal the united forces of a harlequin like Lichnowski and 
a clown like von Vincke, the Left was forced to rely entirely on the 
sporadic outbreaks of farce from its one and only Vogt. We 
realised that he stood in need of encouragement, 

“that important fellow, 
the children’s wonder — Signor Punchinello” ,4 

a “His griefs were manifold” —an adapted line from Der Edel Stein, a collection 
of fables by Ulrich Bonerius.— Ed. 

b This refers to the article “Ein Aktensttick des Ma4rzvereins” in the Neue 
Rheinische Zeitung, No. 181, December 29, 1848.— Ed. 

© Gustav Adolph Schl6ffel.— Ed. 

d Marx gives these lines in English.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.— VI. Vogt and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung 103 

and so let the Frankfurt reporter have his head. After the middle 
of September 1848 his reports underwent a change of tone. 

In the debates on the Truce of Malmo, Vogt tried to stir up a 
rebellion with his revolutionary rantings.* At the decisive moment 
he did his utmost to prevent the acceptance of the resolutions 
which had been passed by the popular assembly on the Pfingst- 
weide and approved by a section of the extreme Left.” After the 
barricade fighting had been crushed, with Frankfurt openly 
transformed into an army camp and a state of siege proclaimed, 
this same Vogt declared on September 19 that he was in favour of 
urgently discussing Zacharia’s resolution endorsing the measures 
already taken by the - Imperial Ministry and expressing gratitude to 
the Imperial troops.” Before Vogt rose to speak even Venedey* had 
protested against the “urgency” of these resolutions, declaring that 
such a discussion at such a time was unworthy of the Assembly. 
But Vogt was inferior to Venedey. By way of punishment I 
inserted the word “windbag” into the parliamentary report‘ after 
the word “Vogt”, as a hint to the Frankfurt reporter. 

In the following October Vogt not only neglected his duty of 
waving his harlequin’s wooden sword above the heads of the then 
boisterous and fiercely reactionary majority. He did not even dare 
to sign the protest tabled by Zimmermann of Spandau on October 
10 in the name of some 40 deputies, opposing the law for the 
protection of the National Assembly.” The law, as Zimmermann 
correctly pointed out, signalled the most shameless interference 
with the popular rights that had been gained in the March 
revolution—right of assembly, freedom of speech and of the 
press. Even Eisenmann‘ handed in a similar protest. But Vogt was 
inferior to Eisenmann. When he did venture forth again at the 
founding of the “Central March Association” his name finally 
made its appearance in an article in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung 

a Vogt’s speech in the Frankfurt National Assembly on September 15, 1848, 
Stenographischer Bericht tiber die Verhandlungen der deutschen constituirenden National- 
versammlung zu Frankfurt am Main? Bd. 3, S. 2091-94.— Ed. 

b The speeches by Vogt and Zacharia in the Frankfurt National Assembly on 
September 19, 1848, ibid., S. 2188.— Ed. 

© Venedey’s speech in the Frankfurt National Assembly on September 19, 1848, 
ibid., S. 2187.— Ed. 

4d Report on the sitting of the Frankfurt National Assembly on September 20, 
1848, Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 110, September 23, 1848.— Ed. 

¢ Zimmermann’s speech in the Frankfurt National Assembly on October 10, 
1848, Stenographischer Bericht.... Bd. 4, S. 2531.— Ed. 

f Eisenmann’s speech in the Frankfurt National Assembly, ibid., pp. 2531 et 
seq.— Ed. 

(December 29, 1848), in which the “March Association” was 
designated the “unconscious tool of the counter-revolution”, its 
programme was critically torn to shreds and Vogt was represented 
as one half of the two-headed figure whose other half was Vincke. 
More than a decade later both ‘Ministers of the Future” 
acknowledged their affinity and chose the partition of Germany as 
the motto of their unity. 

That our assessment of the “March Association” was Correct was 
not only confirmed by its later “development”. The Heidelberg 
‘People’s League”, the Breslau “Democratic Association”, the Jena 
“Democratic Association”, etc., all rejected its importunate offers 
of love with scorn, and those members of the extreme Left who 
had joined it confirmed our criticism of December 29, 1848, by 
announcing their resignation on April 20, 1849. Vogt, however, in 
the quiet grandeur of his soul, heaped coals of fire on our heads 
as can be seen from the following quotation: 

“Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 243, Cologne, March 10, 1849. 
‘The Frankfurt so-called March Association’ of the so-called 
‘Imperial Assembly’ has had the insolence to send us the following 
lithographed letter: 

““The March Association has decided to compile a list of all héwsbabers which 
have given us space in their columns and to distribute it to all associations with which 
we are connected in order that with the assistance of this association the 
newspapers indicated will be given preference in being supplied with any relevant 
announcements. In informing you herewith of this list, we believe it is unnecessary to 
draw your attention to the importance of the paid announcements of.a newspaper as the 

chief source of income for the whole -enterprise. [(...] Frankfurt, end of February 
1849. 

‘The Managing Committee 
of the Central March Association’ 

“In the enclosed list of newspapers which have given space in 
their columns to the March Association and to which the 
supporters of the March Association should give preference in 
supplying ‘relevant announcements’, one finds also the Neue . 
Rheinische Zeitung, which, in addition, is given the honour of an 
asterisk. We hereby announce [...] that our newspaper has never 
- given space in its columns to the so-called March Association.... If, 
therefore, the March Association in its lithographed report to 
those newspapers which have really given it space in their columns 
designates our newspaper as one of its organs, this is simply 
calumny against the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and absurd boasting 
on the part of the March Association... 

“To the dirty remark of the profit-greedy competition-goaded 

Herr Vogt.— VI Vogt and the Neue Rheimische Zeitung 105 

patriots about the mnportance of the paid announcements of a 
newspaper as a source uf meome for the whole enterprise, we, of 
course, do not reply The Neue Rheinische Zeitung has always 
differed from the patriots not only generally but also in that it has 
never regarded political movement as a territory for swindlers or a 
source of income.” * 

Shortly after this brusque rejection of the source of income 
proffered by Vogt and Co. the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was 
tearfully held up as a model of “true German disunity” at a 
meeting of the Central Commercial Association.” At the conclusion 
of our reply to this Jeremiad (Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 248) 
Vogt is described as a “provincial academic beer-blusterer and an 
unsuccessful Imperial Barrot”.« True, at that time (March 15), he 
had not yet compromised himself on the question of the Emperor. 
But we had made our minds up once and for all about Herr Vogt 
and could therefore regard his future treason as a foregone 
conclusion, even before it was clear to Vogt himself. 

From then on, incidentally, we abandoned Vogt and Co. to the 
attentions of the voung Schloffel, who was both brave and 
intelligent. He had arrived in Frankfurt from Hungary early in 
March after which he kept us informed of all the storms in the 
Imperial frog-pond. 

Vogt, meanwhile, had sunk so low—he himself had of course 
done more to bring this about than the Neue Rheinische Zeitung— 
that even Bassermann could venture to brand him an “apostate and 
renegade” in the session of April 25, 1849.¢ 

F. Engels, one of the editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, was 
forced au flee because of the part he played in the Elberfeld 
uprising,” and 1 myself was driven out of Prussia shortly 
afterwards, after repeated efforts to silence me through legal 
proceedings had failed thanks to the jurv, and after the Neue 
Preussische Zeitung, the organ of the coup d’état Ministry,”* had 
repeatedly denounced the “Chimborazo insolence of the Neue 
Rheinische Zeitung, compared to which the Moniteur of 1793 

a Karl Marx, “The March Association” (see present edition, Vol. 9, pp. 
36-37).— Ed. 

b Marx puns on Marz (March) and Kommerz (commerce).— Ed. 

¢ Karl Marx, “The Frankfurt March Association and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung” 
(see present edition, Vol. 9, p. 85). The italics were introduced by Marx in Herr 
Vogt.— Ed. 

d Stenographischer Bericht..., Bd. 8, S. 6303.— Ed. 

¢ The Chimborazo is a peak of the Andes. “Chimborazo insolence” means 
“monumental insolence”.— Ed. 

5* 

seemed rather pale” (see the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 299).* 
Such “Chimborazo insolence” was highly appropriate in a Prussian 
fortress-town and at a time when the victorious counter-revolution 
sought to intimidate people by means of unashamed brutality. 
On May 19, 1849 the last number of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung 
(the Red Number) appeared. As long as the Neue Rheinische 
Zeitung existed, Vogt had endured in silence. If a parliamentarian 
did lodge a complaint, he did so in all modesty. For example: 

“Sir, the sharp criticism in your newspaper is valued by me no less because it 
observes all parties and all persons with equal strictness” (see No. 219 [supplement], 
February 11, 1849, Wesendonck’s complaint).> 

A week after the demise of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Vogt, 
operating under the mantle of parliamentary immunity, finally 
thought he could seize his long-awaited opportunity to convert the 
“matter” he had accumulated deep in his heart into “energy”.” 
The position was that one of the editors of the Neue Rheinische 
Zeitung, Wilhelm Wolff, had replaced a retired Silesian deputy“ in the 
Frankfurt Assembly, which was “in the process of dissolution” at the 
time.'”° 

In order to understand the following scene in the parliamentary 
session of May 26, 1849, it must be borne in mind that the 
uprising in Dresden and the local movements in the Rhine 
Province had already been crushed. The Empire was about to 
intervene in Baden and the Palatinate, the main Russian army was 
marching on Hungary and, finally, the Imperial Ministry had 
simply quashed resolutions approved by the Assembly. On the 
agenda were two “Proclamations to the German Nation”, the first 
edited by Uhland and emanating from the majority, the other 
stemming from the Committee of Thirty,'°' whose members 
belonged to the Centre. Presiding over the Assembly was Reh 
from Darmstadt who later turned into a rabbit* and “detached” 
himself from the Assembly, which was “in complete disarray”. I 
quote from the official stenographic report, Nos. 229, 228. Session 
in St. Paul’s Church. 

Wolff from Breslau: “Gentlemen, I have registered my opposition to the 
Proclamation to the Nation, the proclamation that was composed by the majority 

@ Karl Marx, “The Kreuz-Zeitung” (see present edition, Vol. 9, p. 437).— Ed. 

b Hugo Wesendonck, “Erklarung. Düsseldorf, 8. Februar 1849”.— Ed. 
© Gustav Adolf Stenzel.— Ed. 

d Marx plays on the surname Reh, a homonym of Reh (roe deer).— Ed. 
© Stenographischer Bericht..., Bd. 9, S. 6749.— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—VI. Vogt and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung 107 

and that has been read aloud here, because I think it utterly inadequate to the 
needs of the present time. I find it altogether too feeble. It is good enough to 
appear as an article in the newspapers which represent the party that has devised 
it, but it is not good enough for a Proclamation to the German Nation. Since a 
second Proclamation has now been read out I may remark in passing that I would 
be even more strongly opposed to it than to the first one, for reasons that I do not 
need to enter into here.” (A voice from the Centre: ‘““Why not?”) “I am speaking 
solely of the majority Proclamation. It is true that it is couched in such moderate 
terms that even Herr Buss had little to say against it, and that is without doubt the 
worst recommendation for any proclamation. No, gentlemen, if you wish to 
have any influence on the people at all you should not address it in the manner 
adopted in this Proclamation. You must not speak about legality, the legal basis, 
etc., but of illegality just like the governments, like the Russians—and by Russians I 
understand the Prussians, Austrians, Bavarians and Hanoverians.” (Commotion 
and laughter.) “All these have been subsumed under the name Russians.” (Loud 
laughter.) “Yes, gentlemen, the Russians are represented in this Chamber too. You 
must tell them: ‘In the same way as you adopt the legal standpoint, so do we.’ This 
is the standpoint of force, and in parenthesis you ought to explain legality by 
saying that you will oppose the Russian cannon with force, with well-organised 
storming-parties. If any proclamation is to be issued, issue one which begins by 
outlawing the first traitor to the people, the Imperial Regent.”@ (Interruption: 
“Order!” — Lively applause from the gallery.) “All the Ministers likewise.”” (Renewed 
commotion.) “Oh, I shall not let myself be intimidated: he is the first traitor to the 
people.” 

President: “I think that Herr Wolff has ignored and offended against every 
propriety. He cannot describe the Archducal Imperial Regent as a traitor to the people 
in this House and I must therefore call him to order. I must also request the 
galleries for the last time not to intervene further in the debate.” 

Wolff: “For my part, I accept the call to order and declare that it was my 
intention to transgress the bounds of order and to state that he and his Ministers are 
traitors.” (From all sides of the House: ‘Order. This is scandalous.’’) 

President: “I must ask you to be seated.” 

Wolff: ‘Very well, I protest. I wanted to speak here in the name of the people and 
to say what the people is thinking. I protest against every proclamation framed in 
these terms.” (Great tumult.) 

President: “Gentlemen, will you please allow me to speak for a moment. 
Gentlemen, the incident that has just taken place is, I may say, the first there has 
been since Parliament has been in session here.” (It was indeed the first and the only 
incident to take place in that Debating Society.) “No speaker has ever before 
declared that it was his intention to disrupt the order, the very foundations of this 
House.” (Schléffel had replied to a similar call to order, in the session of April 25: 
“I accept the call to order, all the more as I hope that the time will soon come when 
this Assembly will be called to order in a very different way.”)> 

“Gentlemen, I deeply regret that Herr Wolff, who has only just become a 
member of this House, should have made his début in this manner” (Reh looks at 
the matter from a theatrical point of view). “Gentlemen, I have called him to order 
because he has permitted himself greatly to affront the respect and consideration that we 
owe to the person of the Imperial Regent.” 

a Archduke John.— Ed. 
b Stenographischer Bericht..., Bd. 8, S. 6751.— Ed. 

The debate then proceeded. Hagen and Zacharia made long 
speeches, the one for and the other against the proclamation of 
the. majority. Finally, 

Vogt from Giessen rose from his seat: “Gentlemen, allow me a few words, I shall 
not weary you. It is perfectly true that this Parliament is no longer what it was when 
it assembled last year, gentlemen, and we thank Heaven” (our Vogt of “blind faith” 2 
thanks Heaven) “that it is become so” (is become, indeed! >) “and that those who lost 
faith in the people and who betrayed the cause of the people at the decisive 
moment, have now left this Assembly! Gentlemen, I have asked permission to speak” 
(so the thanksgiving we have just heard was just humbug), “in order to defend the 
crystal-clear stream” (defence of a stream) “that flowed from the poet’s soul” (Vogt 
is becoming soulful) “into this proclamation against the unworthy filth that has been 
thrown into it or hurled at it” (but the stream had already been absorbed by the 
proclamation), “to defend these words” (as with everything that Vogt touches, the 
stream has been changed into words) “against the muck that has been heaped up in 
this latest movement and which threatens to engulf and besmirch everything. Yes, 
gentlemen! That” (namely the muck) “is muck and filth” (the muck is filth!) 
“which is being thrown in this way” (in what way?) “at everything pure that can be 
imagined, and I wish to express my deep indignation” (Vogt in deep indignation, 
quel tableau!<) “at the fact that this sort of thing” (what sort of thing?) “could have 
happened.” 4 

And his very speech is—muck.* 

Wolff had not said a single word about Uhland’s editing of the 
proclamation. As the President repeatedly declared, he had been 
called to order, he had conjured up the whole storm, because he 
had declared that the Imperial Regent and all his Ministers were 
traitors to the people and had called on Parliament to do likewise. 
But for Vogt the “Archducal Imperial Regent”, the “worn-out 
Habsburg” (Vogt’s Studien, p. 28) and “all his Ministers” represent 
“everything pure that can be imagined’. With Walther von der 
Vogelweide he sang: 

“des fiirsten milte iz Osterriche 
frdit dem stiezen régen geliche 
beidiu liute und ouch daz lant.” f 

a Vogt of “blind faith” (der “Kéhlergliubige” Vogt)—an ironical allusion to 
Vogt’s book Kohlerglaube und Wissenschaft..., Giessen, 1855.— Ed. 
b Marx ridicules the ungrammatical verb form used by Vogt: geworden 
wird.— Ed, 
¢ What a sight! — Ed. 
4 Stenographischer Bericht.... Bd. 9, S. 6751.— Ed. 
© Variation on a verse from Ludwig Uhland’s “Des Sangers Fluch”: “Und was er 
spricht, ist Geissel” (“His very speech is a whiplash”’).— Ed. 
“The Prince of Austria’s generosity, 
Like gentle rain, bestows felicity 
Both on the people and on the land.”— Ed. 

Herr Vogt.—VI. Vogt and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung ~109 

Did Vogt already even at that time, enjoy the “scientific 
relationship” with Archduke John that he later confessed to? (See 
Documents in the “Magnum Opus”, p. 25.) 

Ten years later the same Vogt declared in the Studien (pp. 
27}-28)): 

“So much at Jeast is certain: the National Assembly in France and its leaders at 
the ume underesumated the abiliues of Louis Napoleon just as the leaders of the 
Frankfurt National Assembiy underestimated those of Archduke John, and both the 
old toxes made their respectiie detractors bay deariy for their mistake. We are far from 
wanting to equate the two men. The terrible ruthlessness, etc.. etc.” (of Louis 
Bonaparte).-— All this makes him cut a tat superior figure to the old and worn-out 
Habsburg.” + 

During the very same session Wolff challenged Vogt to a duel 
with pistols—a challenge which was transmitted by deputy Wirth 
from Sigmaringen—and when the aforesaid Vogt preferred to 
preserve his skin intact for the Empire,* he threatened to thrash 
him. On leaving St. Paul’s Church, however, Wolff discovered 
Charles the Bold flanked by two iadies, and bursting into laughter 
he left him to his fate. Although he is a wolf, with a wolf’s heart 
and teeth, Wolff is a lamb when he sees the fair sex. His only, 
really quite innocuous, revenge was an article in the Neue 
Rheinische Zeitung. Revue (April issue, 1850, p. 73) entitled 
“Nachtragliches aus dem Reich” in which he wrote about the 
Ex-Imperial Regent as follows: 

“In these critical days the Central March people have been extremely 
industrious. Before withdrawing from Frankfurt they had published an address to 
the various March associations and to the German people: ‘Fellow-citizens! The 
eleventh hour has struck!’ In order to assemble a people’s army they issued a new 
proclamation ‘to the German nation’ from Stuttgart, and lo and behold! the hand 
on the Central March clock had stood still, or like the clock on Freiburg Minster, 
had lost the number XII. However that might be, this proclamation too began with 
the words: ‘Fellow-citizens! The eleventh hour has struck!’ Oh if only it had struck 
earlier, and had pierced your heads, at least at the time when Karl Vogt, the 
Central March hero, was pacifying the Franconian revolution !°? in Nuremberg to 
his own satisfaction and to the satisfaction of the wailers who were féting him **.... 

* In the pamphlet by Jacobus Venedev already referred to, Kobes I tells the 
following story: “In the same session in which Gagern embraced Gabriel Riesser 
after the latter’s speech on the Emperor, ... Karl Vogt embraced Zimmermann in 
St. Paul’s Church with mock pathos and noisy exclamations, and so I called out to 
him: ‘Stop these roguish pranks.’ Vogt thought it expedient to reply in provocative 
and abusive terms and when | challenged him personally, he had the courage, after 
a friend had made a number of journeys between the two of us, to withdraw his 
insult” (loc. cit., pp. 21, 22). 

** Vogt later justified his valiant deeds in Nuremberg with the words: “He had 
been given no guarantees for his own personal safety.” 

a Carl Vogt, Studien zur gegenwartigen Lage Europas, S. 27-28. Marx’s italics.— Ed. 

The Regency set up its offices in the government building in Freiburg. The Regent 
Karl Vogt, who was also Foreign Minister and the incumbent of many other 
Ministries, once more took the well-being of the German people? very much to 
heart. Having studied their problems in long days and nights he came up with a 
very timely invention, that of ‘Imperial Regency passports’. These passports were 
simple, beautifully lithographed and could be obtained gratis by anyone whose 
heart desired one. They only had the one small defect of being recognised as valid 
only in Vogt's Chancellery. It is possible that later on one or other of them will find 

Wolff did not follow Greiner’s example. Instead of “departing 
at once for America” as soon as the Revue “had appeared”, he 
remained for a year in Switzerland, awaiting the revenge of the 
Land-Vogt. 

a Wolff has: “of the German Empire”.— Ed. 
> Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-dkonomische Revue, IV. Heft, April 1850, S. 
75, 76.— Ed. 

VII 

THE AUGSBURG CAMPAIGN 
Shortly after the citizen of the Canton of Thurgau!” had 
concluded his Italian war, the citizen of the Canton of Berne? 
launched his Augsburg campaign. 
“There” (in London) “it was the Marx clique that had always supphed the 
greater part of the reports” (of the Allgemeine Zeitung), “and ever since 1849 its 

relations with the ‘Allgemeine Zeitung’ had been continuous” (“Magnum Opus”, 
b 
p. 194).